Cidade Velha

Cidade Velha was the first European colonial town built in the tropics and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, founded as Ribeira Grande in the fifteenth century and for two hundred years the hub of the Atlantic slave trade. The pillory still stands in the square where enslaved people were sold. Above the town the Fort of São Filipe looks down on a ruined cathedral, a street of the oldest colonial houses in the tropics and a green valley of sugar cane and banana running inland from the black sand bay. The whole town is walked in an hour.