Miramar, Luanda: Africa's Most Beautiful Open-Air Cinema Stood Here

By  Angola Unfiltered

Luanda (Angola) – Miramar is the hill that looks down on all of Luanda. Embassies behind high walls. Villas from the tropical modernist boom. And a ruin where 1,500 people once watched films under the stars while the sun sank into the Atlantic.

Today that spot is fenced off. Metal hoardings, police guards, a huge red flag.

Welcome to the neighbourhood that holds more stories than anywhere else in the Angolan capital.

In short:

• Miramar is Luanda's embassy district and one of its most exclusive residential areas
• Its landmarks: the ruined Cine Miramar, the Alto das Cruzes cemetery, the InterContinental tower
• The best free view in Luanda — over the bay, the port and Ilha do Cabo

The name says it all. Miramar means "sea view". And what a view!

From up here the whole Bay of Luanda lies spread out like a platter. Ilha do Cabo. The port. The sandy tongue of Mussulo. And the old fortresses of São Miguel and São Pedro da Barra, which once guarded the coast. Stand here as the sun plunges into the ocean and you never forget it.

From wild hillside to elite neighbourhood: the history of Miramar

Hard to believe: in the 1930s this was wilderness. Red dust, tall grass, not a single house.

Wild animals prowled the slopes. And the boys from the neighbourhoods below climbed the steep gullies to catch birds with birdlime and pick wild fruit. The vast plot belonged to the influential Burity family.

Then came the building boom. The grassy hill became the showcase of tropical modernism: villas with clean lines, huge glass fronts, manicured gardens. Through the 1950s and 60s the colonial upper class moved in.

Then 1975 – the great rupture. Angola wins independence, the Portuguese leave, and into those same villas move the heroes of the liberation. Nationalist Lopo do Nascimento. Commander Iko Carreira. Pedro Maria Tonha "Pedalé". Overnight, Miramar becomes the power centre of the young republic.

But it never became a district of generals alone. Near the cemetery, the "Alegria pelo Trabalho" cooperative threw up more than five apartment blocks for mid-level civil servants. Diplomats, commanders and government clerks — all on the same hill.

The embassies of Luanda: why Miramar is the diplomatic capital

To this day Miramar is known as the "capital of embassies". Nowhere else in Angola are so many diplomatic missions packed into so few blocks.

USA. Brazil. Russia. China. Plus France, Japan, Gabon, Vietnam, Sweden, Denmark.

Rua Houari Boumedienne officially honours the former Algerian president. But every Luandan calls it something else: the street of embassies.

The main avenue has an even better story. Today it's Rua Ndunduma, named after the king of Bié who died in exile in 1899. Under colonial rule it was Rua António Enes. And in 1975, for a few months, it was Rua das FAPLA — because a column of independence fighters marched down this very road towards the battle of Kifangondo, the fight that decided who would hold Luanda.

One detail still astonishes historians. The grounds of the US embassy sit exactly where the Cemetery of the Dutch lay between 1624 and 1654. Twenty-first-century geopolitics – built on seventeenth-century graves.

Is Miramar safe?

Short answer: it's considered one of the safest addresses in Luanda.

The embassies and official residences mean national police patrol around the clock, backed by private security teams and video surveillance. Property prices follow accordingly — this is where oil and diamond executives rent.

One thing surprises visitors though. Many streets still have no working lighting after dark. And yet every evening small groups sit on the kerbs, chatting, enjoying the breeze off the Atlantic. Afraid? Not a chance.

What happened to the Cine Miramar

It was the beating heart of the district: the Cine Miramar, opened in 1959, designed by architect brothers João and Luís Garcia de Castilho.

An open-air amphitheatre on three concrete tiers. A screen 23 metres wide. Room for more than 1,500 people. Around it a tropical garden – growing a real Welwitschia mirabilis brought from the Namib desert.

"The Ten Commandments" played here. "Lawrence of Arabia". The Cantinflas classics. In the interval came ice-cold Cuca and Nocal beer, chips, candy floss – and Coca-Cola, which back then you couldn't even buy in mainland Portugal.

Dawdle at the bar and you lost your seat. Numbered seating? Didn't exist!

Sundays belonged to the legendary variety show "Cazumbi", launched in December 1961 by music producer Luís Montez. A talent factory like no other. Spanish singer Marisol performed on this stage. And a young Angolan named Elmer Olavo Guerreiro Pessoa – everyone called him "Mitinho" – made his rock debut here with an electric guitar.

Then came civil war, decay, vandalism.

In December 2013 Angola's foreign ministry and the Chinese embassy signed over the surface rights to the site. Today it sits behind metal hoardings, heavily guarded. China's new mega-embassy is going up there. Angola's film institute has confirmed the land is no longer in state hands.

Intellectuals and long-time residents are stunned. They compare it to the demolition of the Kinaxixi market. One of the last jewels of African tropical modernism – simply gone.

Motocross and the rock bar in a train carriage

Before the slopes were landscaped, this was motocross country. Municipal water trucks sprayed the red dirt track so the dust wouldn't blind the riders.

1973 was the absolute peak. Chroniclers wrote that "almost all of Luanda" climbed the hill. Thousands came up from Sambizanga, Bairro Operário, Rangel and Prenda to watch.

The stuff of legend: the rider nicknamed "Stop", who beat Belgian and Congolese pilots on 500cc machines while riding a 250. And Daniel Bumba "Man Henhela", the hero of the boys from Sambizanga.

A few steps away stood the next cult object. Old railway carriages from Bungo station, nearly a century old, hauled up the hill. Someone turned them into a rock bar.

Between 1995 and 2000 practically every band in Luanda shot a music video there. A beer inside a wooden carriage, the lights of the bay below – Luanda didn't get better than that.

Then the bar closed. Today the carriages are quietly rusting away.

Alto das Cruzes: Luanda's historic cemetery

Across from the InterContinental lies Alto das Cruzes, laid out in 1859. Angola's most famous cemetery, and one of the country's great collections of funerary art.

Here rest Pedro da Paixão Franco, pioneer of Angolan journalism, and writer Alfredo Troni, founder of the nineteenth-century paper Mukuarimi. Here too former president José Eduardo dos Santos found his final resting place.

The necropolis has been protected as national heritage since a ministerial decree in May 2000.

In October 2023 it was over. No more burials. After more than 160 years and repeated expansions, the space is finally full.

InterContinental Luanda Miramar: brunch, rooms and prices

And today? Today one building outshines everything.

President João Lourenço opened the InterContinental Luanda Miramar on 11 November 2020 – exactly 45 years after independence. The developer: state oil company Sonangol. The price tag: over 70 billion kwanza. The design, by a South Korean architecture firm, is modelled on a cut diamond.

The numbers make a statement: 25 floors. 389 rooms. 53,153 square metres. A glass façade that throws the light of the bay straight back at you.

The star attraction is brunch at the Sky Lounge on the 24th floor, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4pm. French pastries, smoked salmon, a welcome mimosa.

Window table with sea view: 40,000 kwanza per person. Inside table: 35,000. Water included, other drinks extra. Children under four eat free, over-12s pay half.

Turning up without a reservation? Forget it.

Downstairs there's more: the Curadoria restaurant with its executive lunch buffet, the Le Petit Choux lobby café with its "Bubbly Monday at sunset" between 5pm and 6pm, the La Boqueria tapas bar, and the Peri Peri Pool Bar on the fourth floor with wood-fired pizza and Thursday doner nights.

Visiting Miramar: what you need to know

Where it is. Central Luanda, on the heights between Ingombota and Sambizanga, bordering Cruzeiro, Boavista, São Paulo and Bairro Operário. Ten minutes by car from the Marginal.

Getting there. Taxi or ride-hailing is simplest. The climb from the Marginal is steep — walking up in the midday heat is a bad idea.

When to go. Late afternoon. The sunset from the top of the hill is the whole point, and the tree cover keeps it cooler up here than in the baixa.

What you can actually see. The viewpoints and the streetscape are free and open. The Cine Miramar site is fenced and guarded — you can't go in. The Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré at the foot of the hill, built in 1664 and a national monument since 1922, is worth the detour for its blue-and-white tile panels.

One rule. Don't photograph embassy buildings, gates or guards. Security here is serious and the reaction will be too.

Where to eat. The InterContinental covers the high end. For the view without the price tag, the Sky Lounge bar outside brunch hours works.

Why Miramar still matters

Wild grassland, cinema glamour, motocross dust, embassy walls, glass façades – Miramar has reinvented itself again and again. Some of it beautifully. Some of it, like the cinema, at a cost the city is still arguing about.

Only one thing hasn't changed since the 1930s: the fresh breeze rising off the slopes. And that view over the endless blue Atlantic.

Miramar looks out to sea. Exactly as its name promises!