Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte

The Chapel of Nossa Senhora do Baluarte, on the Island of Mozambique, is regarded as the oldest surviving European building in the southern hemisphere, a small Portuguese chapel built in 1522 in the Manueline style. It stands beside the great Fortress of São Sebastião at the northern tip of the island, once the capital of Portuguese East Africa. Its simple ribbed vault and coral-stone walls have endured five centuries of Indian Ocean weather. The chapel is a founding monument of the island's heritage and of European presence on the coast.