The Beautiful Maputo Central Railway Station

There's a lot of beautiful colonial architecture - and also a lot of hideous 1960s brutalist apartment blocks - in Maputo. Together, they all create a unique city with an interesting urban fabric that can't be found anywhere else. Out of all the old colonial buildings, the most beautiful and prominent of them is arguably the Central Railway Station. It is a green and white colored Beaux-Arts building from the early 1900s. Construction started in 1908 and while it was inaugurated on the 19th of March 1910, it was not finished until 1916.

If you want to see more colonial buildings you should also check out the Central Market (Mercado Central) and the Iron House (Casa de Ferro) near Tunduru Park.

In Portuguese the name of the Central Railway Building is "Estação Central dos Caminhos de Ferro" and is managed by the "Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique" (Mozambique Ports and Railways), which is shortened as CFM - hence the huge "CFM" that is written on the facade.

The location of this railway station is Workers' Square (Praça dos Trabalhadores) in the center of the city. The square felt rather empty, however, there were some long-distance domestic buses departing from it. The main feature of the square is the huge monument dedicated to the Mozambican and Portuguese soldiers who fought in World War I.

The station is often included on lists of the most beautiful train stations in the world. When you enter the station you will find yourself on the platforms almost immediately. If you continue along the full length of the platforms there is a railway museum at the other end. It was unfortunately closed the day I was there, as it is closed on Mondays.

A fun fact is that the Maputo Central Railway Station and Praça dos Trabalhadores featured in the movie Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio from 2006. Several scenes were filmed on-site at the square and nearby streets.

As a railway station, this site is rather useless as things stand currently. The rail lines out of Maputo have all been closed for several years now. Although it does say in sporadic news articles that the lines are going to open up again, I have found zero evidence of that actually happening, either online or while I explored the train station in person.

I wanted to go to Eswatini after Maputo and tried to find a train at the station. As far as I could see, the trains were not really in use. There were no visible departures at all. It's also few people around for being a transportation hub. It is possible that there are a few local commuter trains, but any sign of long-distance trains to Eswatini or South Africa was not found anywhere.

One way, and as far as I know the only way currently, to get from Maputo to Eswatini by public transportation is to take a "Chapa", a public minibus. They supposedly depart from Avenida Zedequias Manganhela near Clube de Ferroviário Football Pitch in the small street between Av. Guerra Popular and Av. Albert Luthuli. Be prepared to wait for several hours for it to depart though. It's not unusual to wait five or six hours, and then the ride will take at least four additional hours until you reach Manzini or Mbabane. Prices I've seen quoted for this journey are 150-200 rands (about 10 USD).

A company in Eswatini that have shuttles, of what seems like a little higher quality than the chapas you hail on the street, is SiyeSwatini TransMagnific. There's no set schedule to/from Maputo so you will have to contact them in order to book a shuttle.

What I ended up doing was taking a taxi to the border, walking over, and then there was a local bus on the Eswatini side that took me and my friend to Manzini. Definitely not an optimal option. Considering the circumstances it was the most viable option we were able to find at the time, as we were not interested in waiting several hours for a hot chapa to fill up. It cost us 1800 meticals (MZN) which is equivalent to about 80 USD. Split by two it was about four times as expensive as the chapa, however, we saved several hours on a journey that still took some seven hours. Something to keep in mind.