This was once the Champs-Élysées of Africa. The 1930s buildings still stand in stubborn elegance—their geometric balconies now strung with laundry, their once-grand cafés now selling phone cards. The Cinema Mauritania’s marquee hasn’t changed since 1947, though the box office sells antibiotics now instead of tickets. Upstairs in the Pension Miami, the clawfoot tubs that once bathed exiled European aristocrats gather dust. But if you press your ear to the right doors, you might hear the clink of champagne glasses from the last tango party in ’62, or the echo of a typewriter that once chronicled the city’s scandals.
