Maputo
capital and chief port of Mozambique
Maputo (Portuguese pronunciation: [mɐˈputu]) is the capital and largest city of Mozambique. Located near the southern end of the country, it is within 120 kilometres (75 miles) of the borders with Eswatini and South Africa. The city has a population of 1,088,449 (as of 2017) distributed over a land area of 347.69 km2 (134.24 sq mi). The Maputo metropolitan area includes the neighbouring city of Matola, and has a total population of 2,717,437. Maputo is a port city, with an economy centered on commerce. It is noted for its vibrant cultural scene and distinctive, eclectic architecture. Maputo was named Lourenço Marques (Portuguese: [lo(w)ˈɾẽsu ˈmaɾkɨʃ]) until 1976.
Maputo is situated on a large natural bay on the Indian Ocean, near where the rivers Tembe, Mbuluzi, Matola and Infulene converge. The city consists of seven administrative divisions, which are each subdivided into quarters or bairros. The city is surrounded by Maputo Province, but is administered as a self-contained, separate province since 1998.
“Maputo” enters the record as capital and chief port of Mozambique. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Maputo, capital and chief can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3889. VIAF identifies the subject as 145395772. The Library of Congress control number is n78060679. Authority coordinates are -25.969, 32.573. 5 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2017, 1976 and 1998.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maputo” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.