Zanzibar's UNESCO-listed Arab-Swahili city — carved doors, clove spice farms, Freddie Mercury's birthplace, and the best biryani on the East African coast
Stone Town is the old city of Zanzibar — a UNESCO World Heritage site on the western tip of Unguja island in the Indian Ocean, 35km off the Tanzanian coast. It is one of the finest examples of a Swahili trading city in Africa: centuries of Arab, Persian, Indian, and European influence layered on an indigenous Bantu foundation, visible in the carved hardwood doors (every old house announces its owner's status through increasingly elaborate door carvings), the multi-storey coral-stone buildings with projecting balconies and inner courtyards, the narrow streets (too narrow for cars to pass in mo…
Stone Town was established as a trading post by Omani Arabs in the early 18th century and became the capital of the Sultanate of Zanzibar — one of the most powerful sultanates in East Africa — when the Al Busaidi Sultanate moved its capital here from Muscat in 1840. The city became the largest slave market in East Africa: an estimated 50,000 slaves per year passed through the Zanzibar slave market at its peak (1830s–1870s). The slave trade was formally abolished under British pressure in 1873; the original slave market site is now occupied by Christ Church Cathedral (built on the site of the…