Stone Town‘s history runs from early Swahili and Persian settlement through Portuguese occupation, Omani rule, the clove and slave economies, a British protectorate and the 1964 revolution. The quarter standing today was largely built during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. Stone Town is the old coral stone core of Zanzibar City on Unguja, Tanzania.
Almost every phase of that sequence is still visible in a single morning’s walk, which is the reason the quarter carries a World Heritage listing rather than simply being old.
Early Swahili Settlement and the Shirazi Arrivals
People were living on these islands long before anything resembling Stone Town existed. Archaeological work at Kuza Cave near Jambiani has turned up animal bone from zebra, giraffe and waterbuck carrying cut marks from human tools, evidence of a period when rising seas had not yet separated Unguja from the African mainland.
By the medieval period the coast was part of the Indian Ocean trade world. Settlers from Shiraz in Persia built the mosque at Kizimkazi Dimbani at the southern end of the island, dated by a preserved Kufic inscription to 1107, which makes it one of the oldest Islamic buildings on the East African coast.
Tumbatu, the island off the northwest coast, was a Swahili state of some standing between roughly 1100 and 1300, trading with other Indian Ocean city states. Its town at Jongowe was among the largest settlements on the Zanzibar coast in that period.
Stone Town itself came later. The site was in use, but the quarter you walk through now is a nineteenth century creation built over earlier layers.
Take a guided walking tour before reading any of this on a plaque. The history here is layered rather than sequential, and a guide who can point to which stones belong to which century turns the quarter from picturesque into legible.
The Portuguese Period on a Stone Town Heritage Tour
Portuguese ships reached this coast in the early 1500s and held it for roughly two centuries, controlling the anchorages that made Indian Ocean trade possible.
Physical traces are scarce, which is itself telling. The most direct evidence sits inside the Old Fort, where the Omanis built over a Portuguese church constructed between 1598 and 1612. Fragments of that church are still worked into the courtyard walls, and a guide on any Stone Town heritage tour will point them out.
Portuguese control was commercial rather than settled. They wanted the trade routes and the anchorages, not a colony, and when the Omanis pushed them out the built legacy went with them.
Omani Rule and the Building of the Stone Town Quarter
The Busaidi Omanis took Zanzibar in 1698 and construction of the Old Fort followed immediately, running from 1698 to 1701 on the site of the Portuguese church. It was built as much against the rival Mazrui faction in Mombasa as against any return of the Portuguese.
The decisive moment came in 1832, when Sultan Seyyid Said moved the Omani capital from Muscat to Zanzibar outright. That single decision turned the island from a possession into the commercial centre of the East African coast.
What followed is what you walk through today. Merchant houses of coral rag and lime mortar, three and four storeys, packed into lanes too narrow for carts, with carved doors announcing who lived behind them. Two door traditions dominate: rounded Indian frames with projecting brass studs, and square Omani frames carved with chains, lotus motifs and Arabic script.
Sultan Barghash bin Said, the second sultan, built six palaces during his reign. The House of Wonders on the seafront went up in 1883 as his ceremonial hall, on the site of a seventeenth century palace belonging to the Zanzibari queen Fatuma, and it was the first building on the island with electric light and the first in East Africa with a lift.
Cloves, the Slave Trade and the Wealth Behind the Buildings
The money that built Stone Town came from two things, and any honest Stone Town tour covers both.
Cloves arrived in the early nineteenth century and Zanzibar came to dominate world production. The plantations sat on the deeper soils of the western belt and they were worked by enslaved people.
The islands also held East Africa’s largest slave market, at Mkunazini. At the height of the trade in the 1860s an estimated fifty thousand people passed through it each year, taken from the interior of what are now Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and the eastern Congo, and sold on to the island’s plantations, to Arabia, to Persia and beyond.
The two economies were one. The doors, the balconies and the palaces on the seafront were paid for by both.
The carved doors of Stone Town are the town’s signature and its receipt. It is not possible to admire the architecture honestly without knowing what funded it.
Abolition and the Building of Christ Church Cathedral
British pressure on the trade built through the middle of the nineteenth century, driven by naval enforcement in the western Indian Ocean and by a missionary campaign in which David Livingstone was a prominent figure.
In 1873 Sultan Barghash signed the treaty abolishing the slave trade, and the Mkunazini market closed. Bishop Edward Steere, the third Bishop of Zanzibar and an abolitionist who had worked alongside Livingstone, had the Anglican cathedral of Christ Church built directly over the site between 1873 and 1880, with the altar placed deliberately where the main whipping post had stood. Steere designed the barrel vaulted roof himself and died in 1882 before the work was finished; he is buried behind the altar.
The trade did not end cleanly. The slave chamber at Mangapwani on the northwest coast was cut into the rock around 1880, seven years after abolition, to conceal captives from a clandestine trade that continued for decades.
The Anglo Zanzibar War and the British Protectorate
In August 1896 a disputed succession brought British warships into the harbour, and the palace complex on the seafront was shelled. The exchange lasted well under an hour and is widely recorded as the shortest war on record. The House of Wonders was damaged and rebuilt, and the buildings on either side of it were destroyed outright.
Zanzibar became a British protectorate, with the sultanate retained as a formal institution. The period left its own layer on the quarter: the Old Dispensary, built between 1887 and 1894 as a charity hospital and one of the most finely decorated buildings in Stone Town, dates from this era, as does the conversion of the Old Fort courtyard into a screened tennis court for European women.
The Roman Catholic cathedral of St Joseph, with its twin spires, was built by French missionaries between 1893 and 1897 and remains one of the quarter’s landmarks.
The Zanzibar Revolution and the Birth of Tanzania
The sultanate was overthrown in the Zanzibar Revolution of January 1964, months after independence from Britain. Later the same year Zanzibar united with mainland Tanganyika, and the blended name Tanzania comes from that union.
Under the union Zanzibar retains semi autonomous status, with its own president, House of Representatives and immigration controls, which is why arriving here from the mainland still involves passport control.
The revolution changed Stone Town’s fabric along with its politics. The House of Wonders became headquarters of the Afro Shirazi Party. Forodhani Gardens, opened in 1936 as the Jubilee Gardens for Sultan Khalifa bin Harub, slid into neglect. Many merchant families left, and buildings that had been maintained for generations began to decay.
Conservation, UNESCO Listing and Stone Town Today
Restoration work gathered pace from the 1990s onwards. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture restored the Old Fort during that decade and funded a full restoration of Forodhani Gardens between 2008 and 2009, rebuilding the infrastructure, lighting and sea wall.
UNESCO inscribed Stone Town on the World Heritage List in 2000, citing it as the most complete surviving example of a Swahili coastal trading town and recognising both its architecture and its role in the slave trade and abolition.
The work is far from finished. Coral rag is porous and the climate is unforgiving, and buildings in the quarter are visibly losing the fight. The clearest example is the House of Wonders, part of which collapsed on Christmas Day 2020 during a restoration funded by Oman, killing two workers. A rebuilding programme coordinated with UNESCO continues, with no confirmed reopening date.
Frequently Asked Questions About Stone Town’s History
How old is Stone Town?
The quarter standing today was built largely during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from coral stone, though the site was in use long before that. The oldest surviving building is the Old Fort, raised between 1698 and 1701 over a Portuguese church of 1598 to 1612. Elsewhere on the island, the Kizimkazi Dimbani mosque is dated by inscription to 1107.
Why is Stone Town a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
It was inscribed in 2000 as the most complete surviving example of a Swahili coastal trading town, showing the fusion of African, Arab, Indian and European influences in its buildings and street layout over centuries of Indian Ocean trade. Its central role in the East African slave trade and the subsequent abolition movement formed part of the case for listing.
Who ruled Zanzibar historically?
In sequence: Swahili and Shirazi Persian settlements from the medieval period, Portuguese control from the early 1500s for roughly two centuries, the Busaidi Omanis from 1698 with the capital moved from Muscat to Zanzibar in 1832, a British protectorate after the 1896 conflict, then independence, the 1964 revolution and union with Tanganyika to form Tanzania.
What can you still see of Stone Town’s history today?
A great deal, and mostly on foot. The Old Fort is free to enter. The former slave market and Christ Church Cathedral, including the underground holding chambers, costs around $5. The House of Wonders can be seen from outside only. Guided walking tours covering the quarter run roughly $20 to $40 per person for a group departure of two to three hours.
How many people passed through Zanzibar’s slave market?
An estimated fifty thousand people annually at the height of the trade in the 1860s, through the market at Mkunazini in Stone Town. Sultan Barghash signed the abolition treaty in 1873 and the market closed, though an illegal trade continued for decades, which is why the Mangapwani slave chamber north of town was built around 1880.
What was the shortest war in history?
The Anglo Zanzibar War of August 1896, fought on the Stone Town waterfront after a disputed succession, when British warships shelled the palace complex. It lasted well under an hour. The House of Wonders was damaged and later rebuilt, and the buildings beside it were destroyed.
Stone Town’s history is the sort that a plaque cannot carry, because so much of it sits in the walls, the doors and the gaps between buildings rather than in labelled exhibits. Holidays To Zanzibar works with licensed Zanzibari guides who grew up in the quarter and tell the difficult parts of this story straight rather than briskly.
For a guided day through the old town at a pace that lets the history land, contact Holidays To Zanzibar and a real person will reply.