RouteBeira

Grande Hotel & Beira's Crumbling Colonial Grandeur

Beira was once Mozambique's glamour city — its art deco Grande Hotel, once the grandest in Africa, now stands a magnificent ruin occupied by thousands of displaced families

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1
Grande Hotel Art Deco Facade
The 1955 hotel was designed to rival the finest in Africa – its sweeping Art Deco curves, sea-facing terraces and ballroom still visible through 50 years of decay and development
2
Squatter Community Inside
Thousands of IDPs have lived in the Grande Hotel since the Civil War — a city in a building, with small shops, churches and schools in the old bedrooms
3
Beira Portuguese Colonial Streets
The area of Macúti near the sea retains Portuguese colonial villas — pastel-painted stucco buildings with iron balconies, most in various states of tropical decay
4
Railway station building
Beira's ornate railway station – designed by Gustave Eiffel's company – is one of southern Africa's finest railway buildings, the starting point of the Beira Corridor to Zimbabwe
5
Praça do Município Square
The central square with its colonial administrative buildings and the surviving cathedral — a ghost of the prosperous port city Beira was before independence and war
6
Port of Beira Infrastructure
The Port of Beira handles the landlocked countries of Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi – the industrial waterfront reveals the extent of Beira's regional economic role