A bayfront capital where Portuguese colonial facades meet glass towers, where kuduro music drifts out of taxis and grilled cacuso fills the markets at dusk.

Luanda is loud, layered, and impossible to summarize. The city wraps the largest natural harbour on Africa’s Atlantic coast, and its centre — Baixa — still carries the bones of a Portuguese colonial capital: pink and yellow facades, tiled patios, narrow streets that suddenly open onto the bay.

Above and around it, the city has exploded — vertically, in glass and steel along the Marginal; horizontally, in the musseques (informal neighborhoods) that climb every hillside. It is the most expensive city in Africa for expats, and one of the most improvised for everyone else. Both things are true at once.

Eat muamba de galinha at lunch. Hear kizomba slow-dragged at midnight on Ilha. Stand at the foot of Fortaleza at sunset and watch the cargo ships line up to enter the bay. Luanda asks a lot of you and gives a lot back.