Cape Verde - Tarrafal Concentration Camp

The Tarrafal Concentration Camp is rooted in the minds of the Portuguese, Angolans, Guineans and Cape Verdeans as the "camp of slow death" or "death". For over thirty years of operation it has been used to practice the most heinous crimes, leaving irreversible physical and psychological scars in those who have daringly opposed the existing political and social order of the New State (Portuguese dictatorship). This was the mutatis mutandis solution advocated by the Salazar regime as well as other totalitarian regimes that emerged in Europe in the first half of the 20th century.

Cape Verde - Historic center of Praia

The historic center of Praia corresponds to a primitive population center of 15 ha of surface, located at the naturally fortified plateau of Santa Maria da Vitoria, overlooking the port of the same name, where the city was formed. Considered since its beginnings as a strategic military site, this site allowed the control of maritime and commercial activities in the region. The site, testimony of the Cape Verdean colonial past, is composed of many infrastructure of administrative, military and religious well preserved and confined in this small space. Initially integrated into the Alcatraz Harbor Authority, Praia de Santa Maria, as it was called at that time, developed with the decline of this captaincy in the second decade of the fifteenth century to become the headquarters of the North Captaincy . Later, the city has also benefited from the decline of the town of Ribeira Grande (Cidade Velha), becoming the main population center of the province of Cabo Verde, this because of its privileged geographical location, its large port, its salubrity and his best defense against attacks by pirates and privateers.

Cape Verde - São Filipe Historic Center

The island of Fogo or the island of São Filipe as it was known during its discovery in 1460 by the Portuguese, was the second island to be populated in Cabo Verde, between 1470 and 1490. Its occupation was initiated by wealthy owners of Ribeira Grande (Cidade Velha) and his slaves, following the letter of limitation of privileges of 1472 that required the inhabitants of the island of Santiago to market only products of this island on the African coast. Despite this limitation, residents of the island of Santiago took advantage of this circumstance to expand their cotton production on the island of Fogo and then sell it on the coast opposite, even knowing that they were committing the law. Thus São Filipe became the first urban center of the island, emerging in the space where the chapel of São Filipe was built, in the place that is now called "cemitério de baixo". While the slave trade at Ribeira Grande (Cidade Velha) was profitable, Sao Filipe played a crucial role as the main exchange product for slaves on the African coast was cotton or panu di terra, the traditional fabric of the country. Cabo Verde). This fabric, produced on the island of Fogo, was very popular in the slave trade to the point where the Portuguese crown banned in 1687, under penalty of death, its sale to the rival maritime powers (France, Holland and England)

Cape Verde - Nova Sintra Historic Center

The town of Nova Sintra, on the small island of Brava, 64km2, remains alive in time as a remnant of a traditional semi-rural lifestyle, characterized by 19th century houses steeped in cultivated gardens with the aim of livelihood and an urban layout acclimated to the gardens and landscaped with trees. The discovery of the island took place in 1462 by the squire Diego Afonso who was at the service of the Portuguese Crown and remained uninhabited for a long time. The settlement of the island began to flourish in 1620 by settlers from Madeira and the Azores. During an earthquake followed by a volcanic eruption on the nearby island of Fogo in 1680, many landowners and a few free black couples found refuge on the island of Brava where they settled. It is assumed that the locality of Furna, the area closest to the island of Fogo, is the place where the occupation began to sprout. However, when pirate incursions begin to become more frequent (XVII-XVIII centuries), fortified towers on the extreme bay are built and more protected and elevated places inside the island to protect themselves from looters are wanted. These desirable places, both flat and inland, had greater water availability and a more favorable climate for small-scale survival and survival agriculture. It is at this moment that the main population center Vila Nova Sintra appears.

Cape Verde - Complex protected areas of the island of Santa Luzia and islands Branco and Raso

The complex of Santa Luzia Protected Areas and Branco and Raso islets consists of the Santa Luzia Nature Reserve and the Branco and Raso Islands Comprehensive Reserve. These islands, discovered in 1461 by the Portuguese, were always uninhabited with the exception of Santa Luzia which was inhabited by a period in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Subsequently, other attempts to settle the island took place without success. The complex is located to the northwest of the archipelago, at a distance of 8 km from the island of Sao Vincente and about 16 km from the island of São Nicolau. The total area of ​​the complex is 609.6 km2, covering the land area, the marine area and the buffer zone. The buffer zone a trail around the complex with a length of 0.5 nautical miles and an area of ​​97.5 km2.

Source: UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List