Cape Verde Traditional Art and Culture. The Cape Verde Islands were uninhabited until the Portuguese first landed in 1460. They settled in an area of Santiago which they called Ribeira Grande and which they used as a slave-trade post between Africa and the New World. Some Africans stayed on the island and worked as slaves on the latifundas, or plantations, there. Ribeira Grande experienced several pirate attacks, and was abandoned after a French assault in 1712. After 1876, with the decline of slave trade, the islands lost much of their economic value to the Portuguese. The main architectural heritage of Cape Verde consists of the Cidade Velha, the town of Ribeira Grande de Santiago and the first Portuguese town built in Africa. Recently classified by UNESCO as a world heritage site, the Cidade Velha contains several monuments of great historical significance, but very few of them are still intact………