Zanzibar: what to see, where to stay and how to get around

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Stone Town was built in the nineteenth century by Omani Arabs, Indian merchants and Swahili traders out of one thing: cloves and slaves. Sultan Said moved his capital here from Muscat in 1840 — an Arabian ruler choosing an African island over his own country — and within a generation this was the largest slave market on the East African coast and the source of most of the world’s cloves. Ninety minutes, flat, in lanes too narrow for a car. Dress covered: this is a Muslim town and the beach rules do not apply here.

A short history of Zanzibar

Persian and Arab merchants reached Zanzibar as early as a thousand years ago. In 1503 the Portuguese took control of it, and at the end of the 17th century the Omanis drove them out. In 1840 Sultan Said moved his capital from Muscat to Zanzibar, and the island became the centre of the clove trade and of the slave trade in East Africa. The slave market was closed in 1873. On 27 August 1896 the shortest war in history was fought here, between Britain and the sultanate, and it lasted less than an hour. In 1964 the island united with Tanganyika to form Tanzania, and in 2000 Stone Town was declared a World Heritage Site.

The ten best sights in Zanzibar

1
Stone Town
UNESCO listed in 2000; the lanes are too narrow for a car and that is the point
2
Old Slave Market
$5 with a guide, and the cathedral altar stands where the whipping post was. Verified 10/2026
3
Christ Church Cathedral
Built in 1873 by an abolitionist bishop, deliberately on the market ground
4
House of Wonders
Closed — the facade and clock tower collapsed in December 2020 and it is still a shell. Verified 10/2026
5
Old Fort
Omani, 1699, built on a Portuguese church; free, and an open-air stage inside
6
Forodhani Gardens
The seafront food market opens at sunset and nothing happens before it
7
Palace Museum
The sultans’ residence until 1964; the furniture is as they left it
8
Old Dispensary
1890s, carved balconies and stained glass; a merchant built it as a charity clinic
9
Hamamni Persian Baths
Built in the 1880s for the sultan; dry now, but the plumbing is visible
10
Freddie Mercury House
He was born here in 1946 as Farrokh Bulsara; the museum is thin but the street is real

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What is an audio walk?

Tours in Zanzibar →

A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Zanzibar:

Free walking tours in Zanzibar

The town the trade built

Old Fort · Built by the Omanis in 1699 on the foundations of a Portuguese church, which is the whole sequence of this island in one building: the Portuguese held Zanzibar for two hundred years, the Omanis took it, and they put their fort on top of the church. The amphitheatre inside is now the venue for the Sauti za Busara music festival every February. Entry is free.
House of Wonders · Built in 1883 as a ceremonial palace and called Beit al-Ajaib because it was the first building in East Africa with electric light and the first with a lift. Thirteen years later the British shelled it in the Anglo-Zanzibar War, which lasted thirty-eight minutes and is the shortest war in recorded history. In December 2020 the facade and the clock tower collapsed during a restoration, killing two workers, and it has been a shell ever since. Verified 10/2026.
Palace Museum · The sultans lived here until the twelfth of January 1964, when the revolution removed them in a single night and the last sultan sailed away on his yacht. The rooms upstairs are kept as they were left, down to the bath taps. One room is given to Princess Salme, who was the sultan’s daughter, got pregnant by a German merchant in 1866, escaped by British warship and wrote the first autobiography by an Arab woman.
Old Dispensary · Built in the 1890s by Tharia Topan, an Ismaili merchant who arrived from Gujarat with nothing, became the richest man in Zanzibar and the sultan’s customs master, and put this up as a free clinic for the poor to mark Queen Victoria’s jubilee. The carved wooden balconies are Indian, the stucco is Omani and the stained glass is European, which is exactly what this town is.
Old Slave Market · Between the 1830s and 1873 something like fifty thousand people a year passed through this market. Two holding chambers survive under the site — low coral cellars with one slit for air, where up to seventy-five people were kept at a time for days before sale. Five dollars with a guide, and the guide is the point: the chambers mean nothing without the explanation. Verified 10/2026.
Christ Church Cathedral · Bishop Edward Steere bought the market ground the year the trade was banned and built the cathedral on it deliberately — the altar stands on the spot where the whipping post was, and a crucifix behind it is carved from the tree under which Livingstone’s heart was buried in Zambia. The building went up between 1873 and 1879 and the barrel roof is concrete made to look like wood, because the builders were told a vault that size was impossible.

The lanes, the doors and the evening

The second walk is the town itself rather than its monuments: a grid that is not a grid, where the lanes were laid to the width of two loaded donkeys and every junction looks like the last. You cannot get properly lost — the island is small and the sea is always downhill — so walk without a map and let it end at the seafront when the food market opens. Ninety minutes, best from four in the afternoon.

Hurumzi Street · Hurumzi means freedmen, and the street is named for the slaves released here when the trade ended. It is also where the carved doors are densest. The round-topped doors are Indian and the square-topped ones Omani; the brass studs on the Indian doors are copied from Gujarat, where they were genuinely meant to stop elephants pushing the door in — on an island with no elephants they are pure status.
Jaws Corner · A small square with benches, a coffee pot and a permanent game of dominoes, and it is the political forum of Stone Town — the name comes from a film poster that hung here decades ago. Coffee is poured from a brass kettle into a thimble-sized cup and costs a couple of hundred shillings. Men sit; nobody minds a visitor sitting too, and nobody will start a conversation first.
Freddie Mercury House · Farrokh Bulsara was born in Zanzibar in 1946 to Parsi parents from Gujarat — his father worked as a cashier for the colonial government — and the family fled to England during the 1964 revolution, when he was seventeen. The museum is thin and the building is disputed, but the fact behind it is solid: Queen’s singer was a Zanzibari, and the island is still not entirely sure how to feel about it.
Darajani Market · The fish hall runs an auction at dawn and is quieter by late afternoon, when the spice stalls are the thing: clove, cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, all grown on the island. Zanzibar produced the majority of the world’s cloves for most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, on plantations that were worked by slaves and later by indentured labour — the spice tour and the slave market are the same story.
Mizingani seafront · Dhows are still built and repaired on the sand here, by eye and without a single drawing — the hull shape is carried in the builder’s head and passed down. The monsoon is why this island exists at all: the northeast wind brought Arab and Indian ships down in December and the southwest wind carried them home in April, and for two thousand years everybody simply waited for the wind to turn.
Forodhani Gardens · At sunset about forty stalls set up on the seafront and the whole town comes to eat standing: grilled kingfish and octopus, sugar-cane juice pressed with ginger and lime, and the Zanzibar pizza, which is not a pizza but a thin dough folded around minced meat, egg and mayonnaise and fried on a plate. Agree the price before it is cooked, and skip anything that has been sitting out.

The island beyond the town

Stone Town is two square kilometres; the island is eighty-five kilometres long, and almost everything that is not the town is either a spice plantation, a fishing village or a reef. This route is the one that needs a car or a dala-dala, and it is built around the two things that only exist here: the red colobus monkey, found nowhere else on earth, and a mosque on the south coast dated by its own inscription to 1107. Half a day. Start at seven.

Mtoni Palace ruins · The oldest palace on the island, begun around 1828, and at its height about a thousand people lived in it — the sultan, his wives and concubines, their children, and the household. Princess Salme grew up here and described it in her memoir: a courtyard with gazelles and peacocks, and a bathhouse where the women spent the afternoons. It was abandoned by 1885 and is now roofless walls by the sea.
Kidichi Persian Baths · Built in 1850 by Sultan Said for his Persian wife Binte Irich Mirza, granddaughter of the Shah, in the middle of his clove and sugar estate so that she could bathe after riding. The stucco decoration inside is Persian and includes birds and flowers — figurative ornament in a Muslim building, which is a Persian habit and not an Arab one. It is small, usually empty, and costs almost nothing.
Kizimbani spice farm · Cloves are the unopened flower buds of a tree, picked by hand before they open and dried in the sun until they turn brown — one tree gives a few kilos a year and the picking is done from ladders. Sultan Said made clove planting effectively compulsory in the 1830s, which is how a Southeast Asian tree became the entire economy of an African island. The walk also shows nutmeg, cinnamon bark, vanilla, cardamom and the lipstick tree.
Jozani Forest · The Zanzibar red colobus lives here and nowhere else on earth — around six thousand of them, and they were called "poison monkey" by villagers and shot as crop pests until the forest became a national park in 2004. They have a compartmented stomach that ferments leaves, which is why they sit still for long stretches. The entry fee includes a mandatory ranger guide, ten to twelve dollars, and the mangrove boardwalk at the end is the quiet half. Verified 10/2026.
Dimbani Mosque · A small coral-stone mosque at Kizimkazi with a Kufic inscription above the mihrab dated to the year 500 of the Islamic calendar, which is 1107 — the oldest dated Islamic building in East Africa. It is still in daily use by the village, which is the remarkable part: not a ruin and not a museum, a working mosque that has been working for nine hundred years.
The Rock · A restaurant on a coral outcrop off Michamvi, built on what was a fisherman’s lookout post. The point is the tide: Zanzibar’s east coast has a range of three to four metres, so at low water you walk out to it across sand and at high water a boat rows you the twenty metres. Book ahead, and check the tide table before you choose the hour — it changes the entire experience.

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Getting to Zanzibar and getting around

Abeid Karume Airport · 7 kilometres from Stone Town; a visa is bought on arrival
Malindi ferry terminal · Fast ferries to Dar es Salaam, about two hours; book the morning one
Darajani dala-dala stand · Pickup trucks with benches; they leave when full and cost almost nothing

Cheap eats in Zanzibar

Zanzibari food is Swahili food: coconut milk in almost everything, the spices the island grows, and fish that was in the sea that morning. It is eaten standing or on a plastic chair, it costs between one and six dollars, and the whole thing peaks at Forodhani after sunset. One rule: agree the price before it is cooked, and do not eat anything that has been sitting out on a tray.

Forodhani night market · From sunset to about eleven; agree the price first
Zanzibar pizza · Two to four dollars; the savoury one
Urojo soup · About a dollar; the lunchtime stalls
Pilau and biryani · Three to four dollars; point at the tray
Mandazi and spiced coffee · A few hundred shillings; the man with the kettle
Octopus curry · Four to six dollars in a village kitchen
Mishkaki · Two dollars; from dusk, in the new town
Spice-farm lunch · Usually included in the spice tour price

Museums in Zanzibar

Zanzibar’s museums are small, under-funded and almost all about the same hundred and fifty years: the Omani sultanate, the slave trade, the clove economy and the 1964 revolution that ended all three in a night. Entry is in US dollars, cash, and a guide is usually included or available for a couple of dollars — take one. Verified 10/2026.

Old Slave Market and memorial · $5 with the guide. Verified 10/2026
Palace Museum · A few dollars, cash; the Salme room
House of Wonders · Closed; seen from outside only. Verified 10/2026
Peace Memorial Museum · Small and dusty; an hour
Freddie Mercury House · Thin; the street is the real thing
Hamamni Persian Baths · A dollar or two; dry, but legible
Mangapwani slave chambers · 20 kilometres north; a car and a guide
Dimbani Mosque · A working mosque; ask before entering

Nature and day trips near Zanzibar

Zanzibar is a coral island, which decides everything: no rivers, no mountains, white sand because the sand is ground coral, and a tide on the east coast that moves three to four metres twice a day and takes the sea out a kilometre. Check a tide table before you plan any beach day on the east side — it is the single most useful thing you can do here.

Jozani Forest · $10–12 with a mandatory guide, 07:30–17:00. Verified 10/2026
Changuu (Prison Island) · $4 at the jetty plus the boat. Verified 10/2026
Chumbe Island · Booked well ahead; numbers are capped
Mnemba Atoll · Swim the water, not the island; 20 minutes by boat
The east coast tide · Check a tide table before booking the east coast
Nungwi and Kendwa · The one beach where the tide barely moves
Kizimkazi dolphins · Boats at six; refuse an operator that chases
Kuza Cave · Village-owned; swimming allowed

Holy places in Zanzibar

Zanzibar is about ninety-nine per cent Muslim and has been Muslim since the eleventh century — Islam arrived on trading dhows rather than with an army. The island is also where an Anglican cathedral was deliberately built on a slave market, and where Hindu and Ismaili temples stand two streets from the main mosque. Cover shoulders and knees anywhere away from a hotel beach; in Ramadan, do not eat in the street by day.

Dimbani Mosque · Ask before entering; a working village mosque
Malindi Mosque · Seen from the lane; prayer times are posted
Christ Church Cathedral · In the $5 slave-market ticket
The Ismaili quarter · Read the doors: round is Indian, square is Omani
Mwaka Kogwa at Makunduchi · July, in the south; visitors are welcome
Ramadan on the island · Adjust to the night; do not eat in the street by day

Things to do in Zanzibar with kids

Prison Island tortoises · Giant tortoises you may feed; $4 at the jetty plus the boat
Jozani red colobus · Monkeys a few metres away, and a mandatory guide who explains them
Butterfly Centre · By the Jozani gate; villagers farm the pupae and you watch them hatch
Mnarani turtle lagoon · Rescued green turtles in a tidal pool at Nungwi; you can swim with them
Kuza Cave · A freshwater cave pool at Jambiani, cold and clear
Low tide at Paje · The sea goes out a kilometre and leaves starfish on the flats
Spice farm walk · Things to smell, taste and climb for, and lunch at the end
Forodhani at sunset · Local boys dive off the sea wall; the food is priced per piece

Nightlife in Zanzibar

This is a Muslim island and the night is quiet almost everywhere — alcohol is served in hotels and in a small number of licensed bars, and Stone Town goes to sleep early. The exceptions are specific and worth knowing: the sunset bars on the Shangani seafront, the full-moon party at Kendwa, and the music festivals in the Old Fort, which are the real cultural event of the year.

Africa House sunset · An hour before sunset or no seat
Emerson on Hurumzi rooftop · Booked ahead; a set menu, not a bar
Kendwa full moon · 50 kilometres out; arrange the taxi back first
Sauti za Busara · February; book a room months ahead
Taarab music · Ask where there is a live orchestra that week
Forodhani after dark · To about eleven; no alcohol, and that is fine

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Frequently asked questions about Zanzibar

What is there to see in Zanzibar?

The top sights in Zanzibar are Stone Town, Old Slave Market and Christ Church Cathedral. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.

How many days do you need in Zanzibar?

Three to four days are enough to see the best of Zanzibar without rushing, including at least one walking tour.

Is there a free walking tour in Zanzibar?

Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Zanzibar, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The town the trade built.

How do you get to Zanzibar and get around?

The main ways are Abeid Karume Airport, Malindi ferry terminal and Darajani dala-dala stand. Full details are in the transport section on this page.

Where to stay in Zanzibar, and for how much?

sleepntrip shows only rooms in Zanzibar that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.

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