On a morning walking tour through Stone Town’s twisted alleyways, we ogle crumbling limestone palaces, mosques and faded mansions.
Our guide also points out the elaborately carved Zanzibari doors, symbolic of Stone Town.
Some doors reflect an Indian influence. They’re decorated with rosettes or brass spikes (originally a defense against elephants). Others have geometric Arab designs.
An elaborately-carved doorway frames this Stone Town shop
Historic Stone Town, Zanzibar
Stone Town is the historic old part of the capital of Zanzibar. And it has a storied past.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s largely Islamic. But it’s also a fascinating melting pot of Indian, European, Arab and Swahili cultures.
Looking out over Stone Town’s rooftops
A vendor sells corn from a cart
The market
It takes stamina, though, to keep walking when the sun starts to burn high in the sky. The muggy heat is oppressive. To visit the market, we must gingerly step across dirty wet floors, picking our way around toothless vendors squatting on the ground, weighing yellowfin tuna, ringed by local bidders.
Clouds of flies buzz around bloody slabs of beef, liver and goat hanging from hooks.
Colorful and unchanged from days gone by, but not for the squeamish!
The fish market – smelly!
Dark slave history
The old slave market and whipping post (now the purposefully-chosen site of the Anglican Cathedral) also clobbers us with reminders of man’s cruelty.
Zanzibar was once the center for the East African slave and ivory trade.
At its height in the 18th and 19th centuries, some 45,000 slaves, captured on mainland Africa, were shipped from Zanzibar to Brazil, India and Arab countries. One dank chamber we climb down to see (smaller than a single car garage) reputedly imprisoned 50 slaves awaiting auction for days at a time.
Rusty shackles and chains, still attached to the stone walls, are grisly artifacts.
The cramped underground slave chamber in Stone Town
Slave memorial on the old slave auction site – photo Zanzibar Palace Hotel
Historic palace hotels
Most visitors go to Zanzibar for its (hot!) beaches. And from your beach hotel, you can tour Stone Town on a day trip (up to a 90-minute drive away, depending on location).
But it’s worth staying in Stone Town for at least a night, if only to experience one of the historic palaces which have been turned into atmospheric boutique palace-hotels. They seem to be haunted by the fictional Scheherazade and will have you dreaming of One Thousand and One Nights.
We stayed at the lovely Zanzibar Palace Hotel for four nights – photo Zanzibar Palace Hotel
Overnighting means you get to catch the glorious pumpkin-orange sunset in Stone Town too – its beauty a stark contrast to the rigors of the day.
Sunset in Stone Town, Zanzibar
If you visit Stone Town
Stone Town and Zanzibar tours:
Providing personalized service, Indoma Tours is locally run by two young entrepreneurial brothers. Guides have escorted Prince Charles, actor Liam Neeson and Princess Zahra Aga Khan. Our guide was excellent! And rates are only a few dollars more than other tour companies.
Where to stay in Stone Town:
Zanzibar Palace Hotel is a restored nine-room palace in Stone Town, with Arabic-style arches, lattice woodwork, steep staircases, carved doors and four-poster beds with silk covers and cushions. We stayed here for four nights. Lovely…
Our travel article on Zanzibar
This post is based on our travel article “Nine Unforgettable Moments in Zanzibar” (online version) published in The Globe and Mail newspaper (Canada). To read a PDF of the print version of the story, click on the image below.
Have you visited Stone Town, Zanzibar?
We’re Janice and George Mucalov, professional award-winning travel writers, sharing tales of luxury travel with a twist of adventure.
No, I have not visited Stone Town but would dearly love to. It has always sounded so mysterious and romantic. I long to walk through those streets, photograph those doors and palaces, and write about it all one day, present and past.
Love reading anything about Zanzibar. I think in total i spend some years on Zanzi in last 6 years and each time i am staying there I find something new. Its like a box with no bottom, always something fun to do and see.
Zanzibar was one of the most exotic places we’ve visited – so we can imagine that each time you visit, you’d discover new and different things to experience :-).
Thanks for another fascinating visit to a place I’ll never see – never enough time in one life!
So true – so many wonderful places in the world to visit. And when you scratch the surface, even “ordinary” places often reveal fascinating sides.
Sounds like a fascinating place that will take you on a roller coaster ride of emotions, as did Gorée Island (a beautiful island with a similarly dark past in Senegal, West Africa) when I went there.
We hadn’t heard about Goree Island until we checked your post Memories of Goree Island, Senegal – very interesting…
Gorgeous photos of a city with a very sad history. Thanks for showing so many sides!
Glad you like the photos…
Beautiful pictures- I love all the details you capture in them. It’s hard to look at the slave chamber photo. Truly hard to imagine a life of being chained and sold.
Thanks for your kind comments :-). Zanzibar’s slave history is definitely a dark part of its past. Hard to imagine that all over the world – from North America to the Far East – man shared in keeping the slave trade going.