Praia

Praia is the biggest city in Cabo Verde and its political and cultural capital — a working Atlantic port draped over clifftop plateaus on Santiago island. The historic core, simply called the Plateau, keeps a grid of pastel colonial buildings, cafés and the presidential palace above the harbour; below and around it, the real city hums in markets like Sucupira and neighbourhoods where funaná and batuque were kept alive when the colonial state banned them. Praia is the gateway to Santiago's deep-African side of the national story — the badiu culture of the interior, descendants of Africans who resisted from the island's mountains — and, crucially, to Cidade Velha, the UNESCO-listed first European colonial town in the tropics, fifteen minutes west. Its beaches are local and lively rather than resort-groomed; its food scene is the country's most varied; and its airport connects the archipelago to four continents.