São Sebastião Museum

The national museum of São Tomé and Príncipe occupies the historic Fort São Sebastião, a sixteenth-century Portuguese fortress guarding the harbour of the capital. Its stone bastions once defended the island's sugar and later cocoa trade, and now house collections of colonial art, religious objects and artefacts of local history. Exhibits trace the archipelago's role in the Atlantic slave and plantation economies and its path to independence. Overlooking the bay, the fort pairs military architecture with a record of the nation's past.