Maputo City Hall

Maputo City Hall
Entrance hall of the city hall

Maputo's city hall, in Portuguese Edifício do Conselho Municipal de Maputo, is the seat of the local government of the capital of Mozambique. The neoclassical building is situated at the Independence Square and was erected in 1947.

History

As Lourenço Marques (the colonial name of today's Maputo) kept growing, mayor José Maria da Silva Cardoso called for an architectonic compition for a new city hall building. The Portuguese-brazilian architect Carlos César dos Santos won the compition in 1938. In 1941, the mayor by then, Francisco dos Santos Pinto Teixeira decided to start the construction works for the new building. It was finished in 1947.[1]

Santos designed the new city hall with a trapezoidal layout situated on a hill, so it became automatically the eye-catcher of the Avenida D. Luis (today Avenida Samora Machel), which connects the Independence Square with the city's downtown area (Baixa). The city hall has a façade of 65 meters and it's completely designed in a neoclassical way and follows the architectonic beaux-art rules. Due to financial constraints, the city government chose artificial stone instead of dimension stone.[1][2]

Lourenço Marques' government (Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques) moved in 1947. Even after Mozambique's independence in 1975, it's still the stead of the city's government, it's called today Conselho Municipal de Maputo.[1]

Since 2011 the building is listed in Maputo's list of patrimonial monuments. Furthermore, it's listed in the Portuguese heritage database Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA) and has the number 31708.[1]

Literature

Coordinates: 25°58′06″S 32°34′26″E / 25.9682°S 32.5738°E

online).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Conselho Municipal de Maputo.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lourenço, Tiago (2011). "Câmara Municipal de Lourenço Marques / Edifício do Conselho Municipal de Maputo". Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico. Retrieved 2015-03-31.
  2. ↑ Ferreira, André Renga Faria (2006). Obras públicas em Moçambique : inventário da produção arquitectónica executada entre 1933 e 1961. Coimbra, Portugal: Universidade de Coimbra.