Maputo shops in layers: Makonde blackwood carvers under jacaranda trees, capulana wax cloth stacked six deep in Baixa fabric houses, and Polana boutiques cutting that same cloth into tailored jackets. Bring meticais in small notes and time to bargain slowly.
Saturday craft fair beside the cathedral square where Makonde carvers from Cabo Delgado sell ebony blackwood figures, batiks and malachite beads from trestle tables. Opens around 08:00, thins out by 14:00. Expect three rounds of haggling.
The lanes running off Bagamoyo behind the Baixa hold a dozen Indian-owned fabric houses selling capulana wax prints by the two-metre panel, stacked to the ceiling. Vlisco-style Dutch wax costs several times the local Mozambican prints.
Neighbourhood market on Avenida Mao Tsé Tung where produce sellers stack piri-piri chillies, cashews from Nampula and vanilla pods beside stalls of woven sisal baskets. Busiest mid-afternoon; cash only, small notes essential.
Mozambique's oldest artists' collective, founded 1936, occupies a colonial villa with studios around a bar-shaded courtyard. Painters and metal sculptors — the Transformação de Armas gun-into-sculpture workshop began here — sell directly from their rooms.
Sister-run label of Nelsa and Nelly Guambe turning capulana into structured jackets, jumpsuits and bomber coats with a clean contemporary cut. Small studio-shop; pieces run limited and sizes sell through quickly.
Terrace café inside the Polana Shopping arcade on Avenida Julius Nyerere, useful for regrouping between boutique stops. The mall's ground floor holds jewellery counters and a pharmacy; upper level runs to phone shops and a supermarket.
Cultural foundation founded by Mia Couto's family in a Sommerschield house, with a small shop of Mozambican literature, translated poetry, art catalogues and ceramics. Exhibitions rotate in the adjoining gallery space.
Julius Nyerere's upper stretch strings together craft and interiors shops selling Nampula raffia, recycled-tin lamps and printed cushions, with several staying open past 18:00 for the after-work crowd from the embassies nearby.
Beside the fish market on the Marginal, a line of stalls sells sisal baskets, shell jewellery and Inhambane straw mats to weekend crowds. Reed and palm work here is cheaper than Baixa because it comes straight off the coastal routes.
The old fairground's shuttered pavilions still host a scatter of restaurants and secondhand traders selling colonial-era enamelware, LPs and Portuguese ceramics among the peeling stucco. Uneven ground and unpredictable opening hours.
Long-running Baixa general store under an art-deco frontage, stocking hardware, household goods and enamel basins alongside a back wall of woven mats and cheap capulana. Prices are fixed and posted, unlike anywhere on Day 1.
Maputo's largest and rawest market, sprawling through Chamanculo with sections for traditional medicine, secondhand clothing bales and tin-smithed cookware. Photography is unwelcome and pickpocketing is common in the narrow aisles.