The Estação Central dos Caminhos de Ferro is Maputo's signature building and the easiest one to fall in love with. Completed in 1910, painted in pale green and white, it is a wedding cake of wrought iron, marble, palms and arcaded verandas, crowned with a copper dome. Trains still run from here — slow services to Ressano Garcia on the South African border, and the Comboio dos Bons Sinais tourist train at weekends — but the station is now visited as much as a building.
The high-ceilinged main hall, with its tropical ironwork and brass clocks, is a popular wedding-photo location and the setting for the Kulungwana art space upstairs, which mounts small exhibitions of contemporary Mozambican art. The platform-side Café da Estação is the most atmospheric coffee stop in the city — sit with a bica and watch porters and pigeons move under the columns. The station is a five-minute walk from Praça dos Trabalhadores at the foot of the Baixa.