Stone Town is the last of the 4 WHS reviews from our Feb 2008 “Indian Ocean” trip (despite being the first site we saw), mainly because I have had difficulty in deciding what to say about it - I wonder why? There was nothing wrong with the place and I have no really negative comments. The general atmosphere is relaxed and reasonably “safe” and there are points of interest – but nothing greatly memorable. So I cannot really “enthuse”. Interestingly at the 1982 WHC Zanzibar Stone Town was rejected (not just “deferred”) with the simple (and very “final”!) phrase “Should not be considered further for inclusion”. Yet at the 2000 WMC it reappeared “from the dead”, with not so much as a “deferral” in the previous year for strengthening of Management Plans or similar! Strange are the ways of the WMC – I wonder what had happened at Stone Town in the intervening 18 years to change it from a “no hoper” into “3 criteria” success!

The place is certainly “on the up”, with old buildings being developed as “boutique hotels” (though many also remain in disrepair) and a beautiful Serena hotel on the waterfront. Thankfully these developments have avoided obvious intrusiveness since the town’s original “completeness” was stated to be a particularly significant factor in its UNESCO inscription. Apart from the Portuguese fort, the vast majority of buildings, and all the significant ones, date from the nineteenth century and create an atmosphere drawing significantly on India and Arabia. The inscription mentions that 32% of buildings are derived from Indian models and 25% from Arab. At times I had to remind myself that this was Africa - I personally kept recollecting a visit to Fort Cochin. In addition to the narrow balconied streets (often described as a “maze” but in reality not covering that large an area and never far from the sea), and the standard “eastern” markets and spice vendors etc (Zanzibar “majors” on spice!), there are also a number of buildings to see of varying interest and quality which receive specific mention in the Evaluation.

First the Anglican Cathedral - built on the old slave market to commemorate the ending of the Arab dominated slave trade. I personally didn’t find its “Islamo-Gothic” style very attractive but the linkages to Livingstone were interesting and the brass plates commemorating the (often short) lives and deaths of British expats shouldering what they saw as “the white man’s burden” have a poignancy – not all “colonialists” lacked compassion or ideals. Speaking of which – the nearby slave house with its grizzly dungeons failed totally to put Zanzibar’s particular example of the slave trade into its historic African, Arab and Islamic (and not, in this case, a significantly European) cultural context. In Zanzibar, slavery over the centuries was very much a horror meted out by Africans and Arabs on Africans and its cessation was very much a European inspired action. See Wikipedia “Islam and Slavery” and its related links to the Arab Slave Trade etc if you wish, at least, to balance the “politically correct” Eurocentric impression of African slavery which dominates today in Western guilt complexes and African accusatory politics!

I had been particularly anticipating Tippu Tip’s traditional Arab town house but it is very dilapidated and not open to visitors. It has its carved door (a “speciality” of Zanzibar) but the historical spirit of this slaver, ivory trader and empire builder, the “uncrowned king of the Arabs in Central Africa”, who vied with Leopold for control of the Congo and ultimately threw in his lot with Stanley, was totally missing.

Conversely, the House of Wonders (photo) and Palace Museum, did bring to life the trajectory of Zanzibar’s Omani dynasty from 1840, when the capital was moved from Muscat, through the nineteenth century when they created an empire in Central Africa and on to the early twentieth century when they ruled under British “protection”. The House of Wonders was built in 1883 at the apogee of the ruling family’s power and is an impressive structure (photo) with some good exhibits (including one about the Sultan’s daughter, Princess Salme, who eloped to Germany and converted to Christianity thus epitomising the disruptive nature of the European presence). From there it was all downhill and, in the Palace Museum, you can see the rooms, with mundane 1950’s suburban furnishings, where the final Sultan spent his last days as “Ruler”.

Another noteworthy building, recently renovated, is the “Old Dispensary” – an 1887 hospital built in Anglo-Indian style with fine fretwork and balconies. It typifies the eclectic nature of Stone Town’s architecture and took me back to the contemporaneous “Indian Merchant” houses I had visited 2 months earlier in Harer

Much to the disappointment of the locals we had NO interest whatsoever in their “trump card” for the “most interesting place” in Stonetown i.e. the Birthplace of Freddie Mercury (nor does it get a mention in the UNSECO inscription!).

So - perhaps writing this review has led me to find more of interest in Stone Town than I felt at the time! I can fully understand why it draws people in. At one end of the market it is a good place for back-packers to break off from the rigours of trans-African travel and get a bit of R+R in a pleasant “multi-cultural” atmosphere with nearby beaches. At the other it offers “safe” exoticism and some upmarket hotels. As a WHS, its historic and architectural “whole” probably justifies its inscription - but don’t expect too much.