José Maria da Silva Cardoso, the Mayor of Lourenço Marques, as Maputo was known in the colonial period, opened an architecture competition for a new city hall in the 1930s.

[1] Santos designed the new Câmara Municipal Building (the new City Hall) with a trapezoidal layout situated on a hill, so it became automatically the focal point of the Avenida D. Luis (today Samora Machel Avenue), which connects the Independence Square with the city's downtown area, (Baixa).

The city hall has a façade of 65 metres (213 ft) and is completely designed in the Neoclassical fashion and follows the architectonic beaux-art rules.

The city government which occupies the building is now called the Conselho Municipal de Maputo in Portuguese.

Furthermore, it is listed in the Portuguese heritage database Sistema de Informação para o Património Arquitectónico (SIPA) under the number 31708.