Santo António is the smallest, quietest capital you could imagine. It is the only town on the island of Príncipe, with barely more than a thousand inhabitants, so small that it is often called one of the smallest towns in the world. A handful of streets of Portuguese colonial houses, a church, a market and the sound of the river and the sea: that is all, and that sleepy modesty is exactly what makes it so appealing.
The town is the gateway to Príncipe and the base for discovering it. Príncipe is the most unspoilt and greenest island in the archipelago, and was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2012. From Santo António you can head out to postcard beaches such as Praia Banana, to historic cocoa roças such as Sundy (where Einstein's theory of relativity was confirmed in 1919), to the rainforest of the Parque Natural do Obô and to the islet resort of Bom Bom.
This guide explains how to get to Santo António, how to get around a tiny, remote island, what to see in the town and nearby, and how to use it as a base for exploring one of the most isolated, lush and least visited corners of Africa. Príncipe is a world apart, and its capital is a place where time seems to have stood still.
Santo António was founded in 1502, a few years after the Portuguese discovered the islands around 1470. It was the capital of the whole archipelago from the mid-18th century until 1852, when São Tomé took that role back. The island of Príncipe lived on sugar and, above all, on the cocoa and coffee grown on the roças, which in the early 20th century made it one of the most productive lands in the Portuguese empire. After independence in 1975, Príncipe gained regional autonomy in 1995, and in 2012 the whole island was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The country's greenest and most unspoilt island: an autonomous region and biosphere reserve, with a forgotten town that was once the colonial capital, and the roça where Einstein's relativity was confirmed.
Read the history of The island of Príncipe →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The island of Príncipe, like its neighbour São Tomé, was completely uninhabited when Portuguese navigators sighted it in the late 15th century, around 1470-1471. It was named 'Ilha do Príncipe' in honour of the heir to the Portuguese throne, who was to receive the profits from the island's sugar trade. Real settlement began a few years later, and the town of Santo António was founded in 1502, on a sheltered bay in the northeast, as the island's administrative centre and port.
During the 16th century, Príncipe followed the same path as São Tomé: sugar cane plantations worked by enslaved Africans brought over from the mainland. The island, smaller and more remote, played a secondary role to São Tomé, but its port of Santo António served as a stopover for Atlantic trade and as a point in the slave trade. The decline of sugar at the end of the 16th century left the island in a long period of stagnation.
Despite its small size, Santo António gained an unexpected importance: from the mid-18th century until 1852 it was the capital of the whole São Tomé and Príncipe archipelago, at a time when São Tomé had been badly weakened by crises and attacks. Only in 1852 did the capital move back to the city of São Tomé. That past as a capital left Santo António with a colonial centre holding more history than its current size would suggest.
Príncipe's great revival came in the 19th century with cocoa and coffee. The volcanic soil, humidity and equatorial heat made the island a paradise for cocoa, and 'roças' sprang up everywhere: huge plantation villages, each with its manor house ('casa grande'), hospital, chapel, drying sheds and rows of workers' housing, linked by roads and Decauville railway lines. Roças such as Sundy, Belo Monte, Paciência and Porto Real transformed the island's landscape and economy.
In the early 20th century, São Tomé and Príncipe became the world's largest cocoa producer, and Príncipe did its part in that dominance. But the system rested on the labour of the 'serviçais', contract workers brought from Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique under conditions so close to slavery that, around 1909, they triggered a high-profile boycott by British chocolate makers (Cadbury among them) and an international scandal over 'slave cocoa'.
Santo António was the urban and port centre of that whole world: cocoa left for Europe through its harbour, and goods and workers came in. The town, though always small, was home to the administration, trade and social life of an island devoted entirely to cocoa production. That boom shaped its colonial architecture and the network of roças that are today among its main historical attractions.
In May 1919, Príncipe played a part in the history of world science: the British astronomer Arthur Eddington travelled to the island and, from Roça Sundy, near Santo António, observed the total solar eclipse of 29 May. His photographs showed that starlight bent as it passed close to the Sun, just as Einstein's General Theory of Relativity predicted. That observation, made on a remote African island, confirmed one of the great scientific revolutions of the 20th century.
The following decades brought the decline of cocoa and growing anti-colonial unrest in the archipelago. After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe gained independence on 12 July 1975. For Príncipe, a small island far from the capital, the new era posed the challenge of asserting its own identity against São Tomé, which was much more populous and powerful.
That claim took shape on 29 April 1995, when Príncipe was granted the status of Autonomous Region, with its own government and assembly, and Santo António became its administrative capital. Autonomy gave the island more control over its affairs and its development, and laid the groundwork for the course it would take in the 21st century: a commitment to conservation and ecotourism.
In 2012, the whole island of Príncipe —with its islets and the distant Tinhosas— was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, in recognition of its extraordinary nature: almost untouched equatorial rainforest, endemic bird and plant species, reefs and turtle nesting beaches. That international seal strengthened the island's strategy of protecting its environment and developing low-impact, high-quality tourism.
Much of that strategy is tied to the South African tech entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, whose company HBD invested heavily in the island, restoring historic roças such as Sundy and opening sustainable luxury hotels (Sundy Praia, Roça Sundy, Bom Bom) that made the company one of the country's largest employers. On Príncipe, restoring the colonial heritage and conserving the rainforest go hand in hand with tourism.
Today Santo António is still what it always was: a tiny, quiet town of just over a thousand people, with colonial houses and an unhurried pace that wins over the few travellers who make it this far. Briefly capital of the archipelago, heart of the cocoa world, stage for an eclipse that changed physics and now gateway to a Biosphere Reserve, little Santo António holds, in its modesty, a surprisingly rich history.
