Trending now
INSPIRATION | CABANA TRAVEL | WORLD OF CABANA
Somewhere between Gabon and the equator lies São Tomé & Principe, a small island state where 16th-century forts and tiled villas – remnants of its colonial past – stand crumbling and untouched by tourism. This makes the island's capital feel like a time capsule of Atlantic trade and plantation wealth, amid jungle cliffs and black-sand beaches, finds Harrison Thane.
BY HARRISON THANE | CABANA TRAVEL | 2 MARCH 2026
A last-minute hop from Libreville landed me in Africa's São Tomé & Principe, the small island state that once fueled the Portuguese empire and carries the reputation for producing some of the world’s purest cacao. The capital still shows its colonial bones: 16th-century forts, arcaded streets, tiled villas, and painted wooden balconies.
Many stand crumbling, untouched by tourism, which makes the city feel like a time capsule of Atlantic trade and plantation wealth. The island’s volcanic spine rises just beyond, with jungle cliffs and black-sand beaches that could double as a Jurassic set.
I was here for a corporate job in Gabon, but a side detour introduced me to Carlo Corallo, the Italian-born chocolatier whose factory on São Tomé has become a quiet legend. Corallo works directly from local beans, guiding visitors through a tasting that strips chocolate down to its essence crisp, aromatic, and almost floral in its finish. He talks about fermentation, drying racks, and roasting curves with the focus of a watchmaker.
Sitting in his workshop surrounded by burlap sacks of cacao, you feel how deeply this island has tied its future to a crop first planted by Portuguese colonists in the 15th century. Outside the capital, abandoned roças, the vast plantations once run on enslaved and contracted labor dot the countryside.
Roofless great houses, tiled chapels, and collapsing drying sheds stand half-swallowed by vines. We set cameras inside ballrooms where bats circle beneath painted ceilings, a reminder of how quickly the forest reclaims man’s ambition here.
From São Tomé I boarded a small twin-prop to Príncipe, the smaller island. We checked into Sundy Roça, a restored plantation house built in 1920. Its renovation kept the verandas and high-ceilinged salons intact, but step outside and you’re back among abandoned workers’ quarters and rusted machinery overtaken by fig trees.
The nearest town, Santo António, is officially the world’s smallest capital, with faded colonial façades and fishermen mending nets along the riverbank. Carlo reappeared here too. His family maintains another plantation on Príncipe, where the main house sits half empty, looking abandoned from the outside.
Inside, Corallo lives with almost no furniture, moving through cavernous rooms as if the building itself were the companion. It felt straight from an Indiana Jones reel, a man absorbed by cacao in a house reduced to echoes.
We closed the trip at Sundy Praia, a jungle resort where canvas villas hide under the canopy, invisible from the beach, and finally Bom Bom, the tiny islet reached by wooden bridge, where bungalows perch over turquoise water.
São Tomé & Príncipe leaves you with the sense of a place preserved by distance. Its colonial relics, its untouched forest, and its chocolate culture create a rare pocket of authenticity, mysterious, beautiful, and still largely uncharted.
Read Latest Articles
Cabana Magazine N24
Covers by Morris & Co.
This issue will transport you across countries and continents where craft and culture converge. Evocative travel portfolios reveal Japan's elegant restraint, Peru's sacred churches ablaze with color, and striking architecture in a fading Addis Ababa. Inspiring minds from the late Giorgio Armani to Nikolai von Bismarck spark curiosity, while exclusive homes—from the dazzling Burghley House in England and an Anglo-Italian dream in Milan, to a Dionysian retreat in Patmos and a historic Pennsylvania farmhouse—become portals that recall, evoke and transport.
