Urban spaces are never what they appear to be. Vision is tethered to the present, while cities are replete with spectral presences, like those emanating from the sedimented violence of colonialism or the pristine visions of development utopias. Archival reconstruction and critical deconstruction can retrace or denounce this ghostly matter. Yet they fall short of addressing its expression – the force it harbours, the form it takes, the effects it conjures. When the overlapping temporalities composing a place are arranged in a linear sequence, what is gained in historical clarity is lost in speculative insight. What that means when it comes to write (a) place is the question that kept haunting me as I negotiated, under the scorching sun, the elongated roundabout of Largo do Kinaxixi, looking for a merciful shade and some kind of entry point to access the multiple layers composing this most intricate of Luanda’s sites. Today, the square has a sleek attire. After renewal works, it reopened for the 49th anniversary of Angola’s independence, November 11, 2024. It has new patches of grass, benches, surveillance cameras, streetlights, public restrooms, an amphitheatre and a luminous fountain. All this makes up for the eerie emptiness that had been left by the demolition of a famous market, almost twenty years before. At the centre of the square, a little puddle evokes the original meaning of Kinaxixi [from kina – pit, hole; and xixi – spring water], if we are to follow Luandino Vieira’s etymological proposition.

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Squares,Luanda,Kinaxixi