Polana is the leafy, comfortable, embassy-and-NGO-flat quarter that occupies the high ground east of the Baixa, looking across the bay. Most of Maputo's better hotels, restaurants and bars are here, along with most of the diplomats, foreign correspondents and expat workers. Streets are wider, lined with jacarandas and frangipani; the buildings are a mix of Art Deco apartment blocks, 1960s modernist villas (several by the architect Pancho Guedes), and recent infill of office and residential towers.
The walk along the cliff-top Avenida Friedrich Engels is the area's best stretch — old hotels and houses on the inland side, the Indian Ocean opening out below. The Mercado Janet market in upper Polana is a useful local food market. Polana is generally the safest part of the city to walk in the evening.