Pemba is a port city in Mozambique. It is the capital of the province of Cabo Delgado and lies on a peninsula in Pemba Bay. The town was founded by the Niassa Company in 1904 as Porto Amélia, after a queen of Portugal, at the peninsula's south western tip and has grown around a port. The city is renowned for its Portuguese colonial architecture. It was renamed Pemba at the end of Portuguese rule, in 1975. Pemba is also renowned as being a prime destination for water sport and diving enthusiasts as a coral reef lies close to the shore. Pemba has increasingly become a tourist destination, particularly for upper-middle class Mozambicans and South Africans. There is now a weekly flight from Johannesburg to Pemba, a five-star hotel, the Pemba Beach Hotel, restaurants, and other forms of entertainment.
