Gateway to Great Zimbabwe — the largest stone ruins in sub-Saharan Africa, built without mortar by a medieval civilisation
Masvingo is the gateway town for Great Zimbabwe, the spectacular dry-stone ruins 28km southeast of the city that gave Zimbabwe its name — "dzimba dze mabwe" means "houses of stone" in Shona. A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, Great Zimbabwe was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe between the 11th and 15th centuries CE, a trading empire that linked the gold and ivory of the interior with the Arab and Indian Ocean trade networks through the port of Sofala. The site's three main areas — the Hill Complex (the oldest), the Great Enclosure (the most impressive, with walls up to 11m high an…
Great Zimbabwe was built between the 11th and 15th centuries CE as the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, a Shona-speaking civilisation that controlled the gold trade between the interior plateau and the Indian Ocean coast. At its peak the city housed an estimated 18,000 people. Colonial-era archaeologists initially refused to accept an African origin for the ruins, attributing them variously to Phoenicians, Arabs, and King Solomon — a colonial denial that the archaeological record definitively refuted by the mid-20th century. Zimbabwe took its name and its national bird symbol from this sit…