Zanzibar

Top things to do in Zanzibar

1. 01

   Stone Town - the alleys, carved doors and Omani seafront

   history culture arts 👍 Popular

   The old town is a knot of shaded lanes between coral-rag houses, studded Zanzibari doors, the Old Fort and the sultans' waterfront, where the House of Wonders has stood behind scaffolding since part of it collapsed. Getting lost is the point; Darajani market, the Persian baths and the birthplace of Freddie Mercury turn up as you go.

2. 02

   Christ Church Cathedral - the old slave market and its holding chambers

   history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommended

   The Anglican cathedral stands on the site of East Africa's last open slave market, its altar where the whipping post stood. Beneath a neighbouring building are the low, airless chambers where people were held before sale, and outside is a sculpture of five figures in a pit, wearing real chains. Sobering, and the most important thing to see here.

3. 03

   Forodhani Gardens - the seafront night market

   food culture arts 👍 Popular

   At dusk the harbour-front gardens fill with grills and lamps: skewers of tuna and octopus, Zanzibar pizza folded on a hotplate, sugarcane juice pressed through a mangle, and urojo, the turmeric-yellow soup with a fritter dropped in. Locals eat here too, and the sea wall beside it is where kids launch themselves into the harbour.

4. 04

   Mnemba Atoll - dive and snorkel the reef off the north-east

   diving nature wildlife 👍 Popular

   A small private island ringed by the best reef on this coast, reached by boat from Matemwe or Nungwi. The drop-offs hold turtles, reef fish in big schools and often dolphins, and the shallow gardens are as good with a mask as with a tank. You cannot land on the island itself, only dive and snorkel the water around it.

5. 05

   Jozani Forest - the endemic red colobus and the mangrove boardwalk

   nature wildlife ⭐ Highly recommended

   The last big stand of groundwater forest on the island, and the only place the Zanzibar red colobus lives. Troops feed low in the trees beside the path and are relaxed about people, and a boardwalk runs out over the mangroves on the far side of the road. An easy hour or two with a guide.

6. 06

   Spice farms - clove, nutmeg and cinnamon on the smallholdings inland

   food culture arts

   Cloves made Zanzibar rich, and farms north of Stone Town still grow them alongside nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla, cardamom and lipstick fruit. A guide walks you round, has you smell and taste each one, weaves palm-leaf hats as he goes, and finishes with a plate of fruit. Touristy and genuinely good.

7. 07

   Paje - kitesurfing the east-coast lagoon

   windsports adventure

   A wide, flat, waist-deep lagoon inside the reef, steady cross-shore wind and a village full of kite schools have made Paje one of the easiest places in the world to learn. The two wind seasons run with the monsoons, roughly June to September and December to March, and the lagoon drains at low tide.

8. 08

   Prison Island (Changuu) - giant tortoises and a coral beach

   nature wildlife history

   A short boat ride off Stone Town, named for a prison that became a quarantine station and never held prisoners. The draw is a colony of Aldabra giant tortoises, some well over a century old, wandering an enclosure and taking leaves from your hand. There is a small beach and snorkelling off the jetty.

9. 09

   The Palace Museum and the Old Dispensary - the sultans' waterfront

   history culture arts

   The seafront north of the fort carries a row of Omani and Indian-built landmarks: the sultan's palace, now a museum of court furniture and of Princess Salme, who eloped to Germany and wrote the first known autobiography by an Arab woman, and the Old Dispensary, a merchant's gift of carved balconies and stained glass.

10. 10

    Kizimkazi Dimbani - the oldest mosque inscription in East Africa

    history nature wildlife

    A modest village mosque at the southern tip carries a Kufic inscription dated to the early twelfth century, the oldest of its kind on this coast and proof of how long the island has been part of the Indian Ocean world. Boats leave the same beach to look for the resident dolphins.

11. 11

    Nungwi - the dhow yards at the sunset end of the island

    scenic culture arts

    The northern tip is where wooden dhows are still built by hand on the sand, and where the west and east coasts meet, so it is the one beach that faces the sunset and stays swimmable at any tide. Busy, with a strip of bars and boats heading out to the reef and the sandbanks.

Getting to & around Zanzibar

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