Santo Antão

Santo Antão is the northwesternmost island of Cape Verde, a mountainous land separated from São Vicente by a narrow channel. Deep valleys cut through its volcanic slopes, and the town of Ribeira Grande grew in one of them. Diogo Afonso reached the island in 1461 or 1462, and settlement began in the first half of the sixteenth century. Ribeira Grande became the principal settlement and, in 1732, the seat of the island's municipality.