Stone Town is a residential neighbourhood of about a hundred hectares, around 247 acres, with six centuries of trade built into its walls. There is no one building you come to see. The town is the thing.
It is also a maze, and that is both why people love it and why some people have had enough of it by lunchtime.
Is Stone Town the capital of Zanzibar
Zanzibar City is the official capital, and Stone Town is its historic core. The newer half of the city, across the creek, is called Ng’ambo.
Stone Town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000. Its Swahili name is Mji Mkongwe, which means the old town.
And one thing that surprises people on arrival. Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania with its own government and its own immigration control, so even flying in from the mainland you go through passport control again.
Getting lost in the alleys
The alleys run between one and three metres wide, three to ten feet, and they bend, fork and dead-end. No cars fit, which is why luggage arrives by handcart or on somebody’s back.
The houses are coral stone, three and four storeys, with shops the size of a cupboard at street level. A Hindu temple and a mosque sit on the same street. Men sit along the stone benches built into the house fronts, called baraza, which were put there to keep rainwater out of the doorways in the wet season and have been used for sitting on ever since.
It is busy and it is chaotic. Scooters, vendors, and the smell of the fish market reaching further than you expect. Some visitors are done after two hours. Others stay a day longer than they planned.
You will get lost. Everybody does. The town is small enough that walking in any one direction puts you back at the water inside ten minutes, so being lost here is the least consequential version of it anywhere.
The doors, the detail you end up looking at
There are hundreds of carved wooden doors in this town and they tell you who lived behind them. Once somebody points that out, you stop looking at the streets and start looking at the doors.
Indian doors have round or arched tops and heavy brass studs, which tradition says were there to stop war elephants. Omani and Arab doors are rectangular, sometimes carrying an inscription from the Quran. Swahili doors are the oldest and the plainest, carved with vines and flowers rather than geometry.
The wood is mostly teak brought in from India and Burma, or local mvule and mbambakofi. Sultan Barghash, who had spent time in exile in Bombay, is the reason the Indo-Islamic arched door became fashionable here from about 1870.
A good guide will show you which trading family lived behind which door, and why two doors on the same street can be fifty years apart. That is worth paying for, and it is the single thing that turns a walk through Stone Town into something you remember.
The former slave market and the Anglican cathedral
The slave market stood in the middle of town, and it was the hub of the nineteenth-century East African slave trade.
In 1840 Sultan Said bin Sultan moved his capital from Oman to Zanzibar to be close to that trade. Cloves and ivory left the island, and so did people. In 1873, under British pressure, Sultan Barghash banned the export of slaves and the markets had to close. Slavery was formally abolished here in 1909.
Construction of Christ Church, the Anglican cathedral, began on the market site in 1873 under Bishop Edward Steere. It is built of coral stone with a vaulted ceiling, and it mixes Victorian neo-Gothic with Islamic and Swahili elements in a way that should not work and does. Beside it are two underground cells where people were held before being sold. They are low, small and airless, and you can go down into them.
Outside stands a monument by the sculptor Clara Sörnäs, in place since 1998. Five figures standing in a pit, with real chains around their necks, so that you look down at them.
Practical. Open roughly eight in the morning until five in the afternoon. A guide sits at the ticket desk and comes with the ticket, and he is good. Allow one to two hours. There are men at the entrance offering to guide you for free who will expect payment at the end, so walk past them to the ticket desk.
What you will often hear here that is not true
Three things get repeated in guidebooks and on blogs as settled fact. They are not, and this is the one place in this town where being told the truth matters more than being told a good story.
The numbers. You will see fifty thousand people a year, or six hundred thousand between 1830 and 1873. Historians’ estimates vary enormously, from around twenty to thirty thousand a year in the 1860s up to much higher contemporary figures, including Livingstone’s. Some historians consider the highest totals statistically impossible. The honest answer is the range, not one number, and the range is terrible enough.
The altar. Every guide will tell you the high altar stands exactly where the whipping post stood. That is tradition rather than documented fact. It may well be true. It has not been established.
Livingstone. David Livingstone was an abolitionist, not a slave trader, and we have heard him described as the latter more than once in this town. The wooden cross in the cathedral is made from the tree under which his heart was buried in Zambia. His body lies in Westminster Abbey in London.
You will also read that slaves were secretly traded through the Mangapwani caves until 1964. As a general statement that is not correct, and it gets repeated because it makes a better ending than the real one.
The House of Wonders is closed, and so is the Palace Museum
Both are shut. We are starting with that because a great deal of what you will read online still tells you to go and see them, and people are building mornings around two buildings they cannot get into.
The House of Wonders, Beit al-Ajaib. Built in 1883 for Sultan Barghash as a ceremonial palace, and the first building in East Africa with electric light, a lift and running water, which is where the name came from. On Christmas Day 2020 part of it collapsed during restoration work and two workers were killed. It has been closed since. Oman is funding the restoration, which was about half finished in early 2026, and there is no reopening date. You can look at the outside, through scaffolding.
The Palace Museum, Beit al-Sahel. Closed since around 2021 and under restoration. A small exhibition is still open, and the graves of several sultans in the garden can be seen for an entrance fee, although you can also glimpse them over the wall from the side street, and some visitors feel that is enough. The palace used to hold a display about Princess Sayyida Salme, who in 1866 fled to Hamburg with a German merchant while pregnant and later wrote her memoirs, which is one of the better stories this town has. It is not on show at the moment.
So do not plan a morning around those two, and do ask locally what is open in the week you are there, because this changes.
The Old Fort, Ngome Kongwe
The oldest building in Stone Town. Portuguese to begin with, in the seventeenth century, and rebuilt by the Omanis in 1699. It has been a garrison and a prison, and from 1905 to 1928 it was the terminus of the Zanzibar Railways. The amphitheatre inside was added in the 1990s.
It is a cultural centre now, with a courtyard, shade, shops and dance performances some afternoons. The courtyard is free to walk into and half an hour covers it, and in the middle of a hot Stone Town day that shade is worth more than the history.
Twice a year it becomes the centre of the island. In February, Sauti za Busara, a music festival with hundreds of African artists. In June, the Zanzibar International Film Festival, running since 1997. If you are coming in either of those weeks, book your accommodation a long way ahead.
Forodhani Gardens, where the town goes in the evening
The gardens on the waterfront were laid out in 1936 for the silver jubilee of Sultan Khalifa, which is a very colonial reason for a very local place.
Every evening the stalls go up: grilled seafood, satay, sugarcane juice pressed in front of you with lime and ginger, and Zanzibar pizza, which is closer to a filled omelette pancake than to anything Italian.
And it is not a tourist performance. Boys dive off the seawall, there is football on the strip of beach beside it, and families sit there until dark. You are a guest at something that happens anyway.
Practical. Come late in the afternoon and stay for sunset. Agree the price before anybody starts cooking, which is normal here and nobody minds being asked. Pick a stall with a queue, because the turnover is high and the food is fresh.
Darajani Market
The covered market on Creek Road, where the city does its own shopping. Fish, meat, vegetables, fruit, and spices sold by weight rather than in little jars. Next to it is Darajani Bazaar, where most of the imported goods are sold.
Practical. Busiest early in the morning, which is also when it is best. Strong smells, particularly around the fish and the meat, and wet floors. It is not for everybody and it is sometimes too much for children.
What we think. Go, even if you buy nothing. You will learn more about Zanzibar in ten minutes in there than in any museum on the island, and the fact that it has not been tidied up for visitors is exactly the point.
Freddie Mercury’s house
Farrokh Bulsara was born in Stone Town on 5 September 1946, into a Parsi family. His father worked for the British colonial administration here. He became Freddie Mercury later, somewhere else.
A museum about him opened on Kenyatta Road at the end of 2019, set up by the photographer Javed Jafferji with support from Brian May and from Freddie’s sister Kashmira. Half an hour covers it.
About the birth house. Which house he was born in is disputed. The family moved several times and more than one address is claimed. The museum does not always come down firmly on one, and we think that is fair of them rather than evasive.
What we think. Thirty good minutes if you care about Queen, and skippable if you do not, without missing anything about Zanzibar. There is a statue outside and looking at that is free.
Excursions from Stone Town
Stone Town is where almost everything on Zanzibar leaves from. The harbour is in the town and the airport is about fifteen minutes away, which makes it the most practical base on the island, whatever else you think of it.
Prison Island, Changuu. About 5 kilometres offshore, 3 miles, twenty to thirty minutes in a boat. It was never used as a prison, it became a quarantine station instead. What is there now are Aldabra giant tortoises, the oldest estimated at over 190 years. Half a day, and the best thing on this list to do with children.
A spice tour. Inland to the plantations, where cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla, nutmeg and cloves grow alongside one another. Half a day, usually in the morning. The quality varies a great deal between operators, between a working plantation and a garden planted for tour buses, and the difference is the operator rather than the price.
The Nakupenda sandbank. At low tide a strip of white sand comes up out of the sea and by the afternoon it has gone again. The boatman grills fresh fish on it while you are standing there. The timing is set by the tide, so it is confirmed shortly beforehand rather than when you book. Go early, because the middle of the day is when every boat arrives.
Chumbe Island. A small island southwest of the city with one of the best preserved coral reefs in East Africa, run as a private marine park since the 1990s. No diving, because the reef is shallow, only snorkelling. Day visitor numbers are capped and booking opens only a few days ahead, because it depends on the weather.
Safari Blue, from Fumba. A full day by dhow through Menai Bay, with snorkelling, a sandbank and a lunch of fish caught that morning. Not suitable for children under five.
The Mangapwani caves. Sixteen miles north of the town, 25 kilometres, a coral cave with fresh water in it and a separate built chamber connected to the slave trade. Quieter and rawer than the monuments in town, and it stays with people longer.
We arrange both which excursions go in and which operator runs them, which on this island is the part that decides whether a day is good. Diving and snorkelling we have written about separately.
How much time you need for Stone Town
Half a day covers the core: the slave market, the fort, the maze, and the waterfront buildings from the outside. This is what most people do, as a day trip in from the beach.
A full day with one night is what we recommend. It gets you a museum, the sunset, the evening market and the town after dark, and the town after dark is a different place from the town at three in the afternoon.
Two to three nights suits anyone who wants the excursions, Prison Island or the spice tour, or who simply wants to go slower than the alleys make you.
We usually put Stone Town at the start or the end of the beach half of a trip, because the airport and the harbour are both there and it saves you a transfer. And one night is almost always better than a day trip, for the simple reason that the day trip gives you the hottest, busiest hours and none of the good ones.
Staying in Stone Town
The places worth staying in are restored merchant houses, usually with a roof terrace above the rooftops, where you sit while the call to prayer goes across the town five times a day. There is nothing else quite like it on the island.
Things to know before you book one. The stairs are narrow and steep and there is usually no lift. There is usually no pool. There is street noise and mosque noise, including early in the morning. And no car reaches the door, so your bags come the last stretch on foot.
If that sounds like too much, you can stay just outside the old core towards the water, which is quieter and far easier with luggage, and has less of the thing you came for.
And I will be straight about one thing, because nobody else writes it down. If you use a wheelchair, the core of Stone Town does not work. Cobbles, thresholds, steps and no lifts. What we do in that case is put you in accommodation on the edge of town and take the town in short stretches, which does work, and I would rather tell you that now than have you find out standing in an alley.
What to wear, and how things work here
Zanzibar is predominantly Muslim and Stone Town is somebody’s neighbourhood rather than a resort. Shoulders and knees covered, men included. Long trousers or a long skirt and a T-shirt with sleeves is all it takes, and it is noticed.
Alcohol is served in hotels and in bars aimed at visitors, and not elsewhere. Go easy on kissing and holding hands in the street. And always ask before you photograph somebody, which is true everywhere and is true here in particular, because people are at home.
The call to prayer sounds five times a day, the first one before sunrise, so a room facing a mosque is a decision rather than an accident. The streets near the mosques are busier around Friday afternoon prayers.
Ramadan. During the fasting month many restaurants are closed or limited during daylight, the pace of everything slows, and not eating, drinking or smoking in the street during the day is appreciated. Eid al-Fitr afterwards is a few days of celebration with its own opening hours. Ramadan falls around 8 February to 9 March in 2027, and around late January to late February in 2028, with the exact dates set by the moon. The evenings during Ramadan are livelier than usual, which nobody tells you.
Is Stone Town safe
Yes, with the precautions you would take in any city. It is not a dangerous place. It is a busy place with a lot of visitors in it, and pickpockets work where visitors are.
Carry your bag in front of you, take very little cash out with you, and leave your passport in the hotel safe. In the evening stay on the busy streets and the waterfront rather than the dark side alleys. We would also tell a woman travelling alone not to walk the core on her own at night, and that is our own advice rather than a general warning about the island.
Papasi. The local word for the street sellers and self-appointed guides, and it is not a flattering one. They are pushy and they are persistent. The best known of their routines is the free guide at the slave market who asks for money at the end. They are not dangerous. One clear friendly no and keep walking, and not stopping to explain yourself works even better than the no.
We always include an approved local guide, which among other things means nobody approaches you, because it is obvious you already have somebody.
When to go
You can visit the town all year, and the month still changes what it is like.
June to October and December to February are dry and comfortable. Very little wind gets down into the alleys, so it feels warmer in there than it does on the beach, which catches people out.
March to May is the long rains, with April the wettest. The alleys can flood, which is the whole reason the barazas are raised off the ground. It is also quieter and cheaper then, and the showers are usually short.
February for Sauti za Busara and June for the film festival bring crowds and higher accommodation prices, so those two weeks are a decision either way.
Stone Town is the part of Zanzibar people expect least and talk about most afterwards. You spend half a day walking through six centuries of trade and faith and history, with somebody’s laundry hanging over your head the whole way.
What fits your trip depends on how many days you have and where you are sleeping. We plan Stone Town around the airport, and one night beats a day trip. Which coast suits you is on our Zanzibar page.
Safari njema.
Stone Town in your route
One night beats a day trip, and where it falls depends on your flights, which is the part we work out for you.
The Dutch points at the Safari and Zanzibar example trip, which still has no English address, so this is the same placeholder as the rest of the round.
