The Praça dos Trabalhadores ("Workers' Square") is the triangular plaza at the foot of the Baixa, framed on one side by the pale-green facade of the Maputo Central Railway Station and on the others by the colonial-era post office and the customs building. Before independence it was the Praça Mac-Mahon, named after the 19th-century French president who arbitrated the Anglo-Portuguese boundary dispute that left Lourenço Marques in Portuguese hands.
The centre of the square is now occupied by a monument to the Mozambican workers who built the railway. The cafés on the western edge — particularly the long-running Café Continental — are good places to sit and watch the city move. Most arrivals into Maputo by long-distance train spill out into this square; even now it feels like the city's front door.