São Tomé Town and the Roças

São Tomé town, the tiny capital of the island nation, is a sleepy, atmospheric place of faded Portuguese colonial charm, its pastel-painted buildings, old fort, cathedral and lively market clustered by the calm sea, moving at an unhurried equatorial pace. Scattered across the islands are the roças, the grand old plantation estates built during the era when São Tomé was one of the world's leading producers of cocoa and coffee. These sprawling complexes, with their once-elegant manor houses, hospitals, chapels and workers' quarters, now often faded, crumbling or partly restored, are hauntingly beautiful and tell the layered, and at times painful, story of the islands' plantation past.

What you actually see

• São Tomé town - the pastel colonial capital by the sea.
• The roças - the atmospheric old cocoa plantation estates.
• The cocoa and chocolate - the plantations and artisan chocolate.
• The colonial architecture - the fort, cathedral and old buildings.

When to go

June to September, the drier season, for the most pleasant weather to explore the town and the scattered estates; the capital and roças can be visited year-round at an unhurried pace. Some roças have been restored as guesthouses or chocolate-making centres, offering an atmospheric and characterful place to stay or visit.

Honest expectations

São Tomé town is tiny, sleepy and faded rather than a grand capital, and many of the roças are crumbling and semi-abandoned rather than polished attractions, which is precisely their melancholy, atmospheric charm; the plantation history they embody includes a difficult legacy of forced and coerced labour, worth understanding. As an evocative glimpse of faded colonial elegance and the cocoa history that shaped the islands, though, unhurried and deeply atmospheric, the town and roças are a fascinating counterpoint to the nature.

Nearby

The rainforest, the beaches and Pico Cão Grande are within reach.