The city of Angoche is situated at 185 km from Nampula and has its history closely linked to the Sultanate of the same name in the past engaged in the slave trade and fiercely opposed to the Portuguese occupation.
In the 60’s the city registered an extremely rapid growth with the establishment of an industrial fishing centre and the establishment of several cashew nut processing factories.
The territory encompasses both continental and insular areas that cover 188 km2 and has an estimated population of 85.703 in habitants.
The development of Nacala is closely linked to its harbour, the best on the Mozambique coast, which saw the preliminary studies for its construction in the early 60’s of last century and was opened to navigation traffic in 1951. It is now the terminal of the important “Nacala Corridor” and is at the intersection of two important national roads, the EN8 which links with the city of Nampula and the EN106 that links Pemba to Montepuez. The city covers an area of 400 km2 divided in 23 suburbs and has a population of 198.783 inhabitants.
The city of Nampula owes its origins to the military occupation of the region when a military garrison was established there. Its political, economical and strategic importance starts to be defined in the early 30’s of last century when it became the administrative headquarters for the district. It became a city in 1956. With the onset of the struggle for national liberation that would lead to national independence the city transformed itself in an important military centre and become headquarters to the Portuguese Military Command.
The city has nowadays a population of 304.074 inhabitants spread over an area of 404km2 divided in 18 suburbs. The Mozambique Island entered very early into the history of the Indian Ocean when in the 5th and 6th centuries the now Mozambican coastal waters started to be visited by traders of different origins in search of gold and ivory.
This importance would be reinforced in the 14th and 15th centuries when the Portuguese started to intervene in the mercantile traffic of the Indian Ocean. Up to the end of the 19th century the town was a distribution centre in several directions such as the Hindustan Peninsula, Persian Gulf, Cape Town, South and North America and the Caribbean’s.
Gold together with ivory and an insipient slave trade had constituted since immemorial times the bulk of the Islamic trading posts between Sofala and the Island of Mozambique.
The Portuguese traders would also carry on for a while the same trade. It was however in the beginning of the 17th century, but more so in the next two centuries, that the slave trade reached gigantic proportions. The French were the ones that initiated a systematic slave trade operation in the Island of Mozambique towards the end of the 18th century.
The Island entered a very rapid process of decadence after the capital was transferred to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) at the end of the 19th century and later on with the transference of the District’s Administration Headquarters to Nampula as well as with the opening to traffic of the Nacala harbour in 1951. The attempt to find a new purpose for the island was done in the first decade of the 20th century when a special tourism zone was created in 1967 followed by the creation of a new Administrative District in the island in 1973.
In face of this situation the only improvement that was relevant was the inauguration of the bridge in1967 because it was directly related to the maintenance of the Mozambique Island as a coastal trading harbour exporting local products such as cashew nuts, cotton and sisal. Because the construction of the bridge was not followed by the construction of the then proposed wharf perverse effects resulted to the point that it was considered one of the causes of its accelerated downfall.
It is thought that the centre of the primitive Muslim settlement should have been built where the actual stone built town is sited near the harbour. The Portuguese on the other hand established their settlement in 1507, around the original tower that was their first fortification and trading post, on the west side of the island facing the bay and more sheltered from the predominant winds.
In the first half of the 17th century the Island was already divided into two distinct settlements: the area built in stone and the area built in macuti. At this time the stone built area occupied already a third of the island with its dwellings and fortress with its respective parade. In the second half of the same century more than half of the island was already built in stone.

The construction of the great public works such as the fortress and the water cisterns implied the quarrying of many thousands of cubic meters of stone and the calcinations of many different types of shells for the production of lime.

The stone built town carries on its expansion in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the first place due to the revenues generated by the slave trade and in the second place with the trade in oil-producing plants that forced the construction of major warehouses in the region. Generally speaking the town consists of narrow streets flanked by 2 or 3 storey buildings many of them with terraces which reflect their strong Moorish influence. Some of the more stately buildings are examples of the Portuguese architecture of the 16th and17th centuries.

Many of these dwellings have small backyards where very often gardens are to be found together with water-wells, kitchen and toilet facilities and others on the other hand have miniscule backyard where pawpaw trees and some ricinus plants are to be found and where women cook their meals. The entire island is a monument and as such recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO since 1991.

An aimless stroll through its streets will enable the discovery of an out-of-the-ordinary and picturesque details that will delight the visitor. Buildings that merit an almost compulsory visit are:
The S. Sebastião Fortress which construction was initiated in 1558 and it is believed to have been finished in 1620; the Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte built in 1522, and possibly the oldest building in the island, was built in the style of late Portuguese gothic (Manuelino style); the S. Domingo’s Convent with origins dating to 1578 and reconstructed in1662; the Palace of São Paulo dating to 1610 and initially destined to be a Jesuitical college and since 1969 serving as a museum after properly restored and re-furbished and having as an annex the Capela de Cova that contains a triptych and a pulpit wood carved in India in the 17th century; the Igreja da Misericórdia which existence dates back to the 16th century and houses in its interior a museum of Sacred Art; the summer palace of the Governadores Gerais and the Vasco da Gama water well. At Goa Island one can find the oldest lighthouse on the Mozambican coast having been commissioned in 1876.

The province is also internationally renowned for the beauty of its beaches amongst which those of Chocas, Mozambique Island and Fernão Veloso (situated in the city of Nacala) stand out.

In the City of Nampula one can visit the Ethnographic Museum that houses mainly artefacts representative of the cultural heritage of Northern Mozambique and the Catholic Cathedral.

At the backyard of the museum an important handicraft fair known as “Piece of Wood” is held every Saturday and artefacts can be bought. The Dam’s wall site on the outskirts of the city, which visit is a must, offers the watching of a great variety of bird life.