Photo: Magnus Kjaergaard (CC BY 3.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of Lamu Old Town on foot, along the seafront and the narrow lanes of a town with no cars, where donkeys still carry the loads. It starts at the Lamu Museum, a stone verandah house that later became the residence of the senior British colonial administrator and then of the District Commissioner until 1968, and the donkey sanctuary beside it, then goes to the Swahili House Museum, an eighteenth-century stone house built by a Lamu woman, Mwana Madina. Back on the seafront, built on reclaimed land as one continuous front of arcades and verandahs, it follows Usita wa Mui, the old bazaar street, to the Pwani Mosque, whose origins are claimed to reach back to around 1370, and Mkunguni Square, once a landing place for boats. Facing the square is the fort, built between about 1813 and 1821 after Lamu defeated an attack at Shela in 1812, and a prison from 1910 to 1984. The walk goes on to the market, the German Post Office Museum, which handled the mail of the Witu protectorate from 1888 to 1891, and the Shia Ithna-Asheri mosque on the seafront, and ends at the Riyadha Mosque, opened in 1901, a teaching mosque and the centre of the Maulidi. The mosques are working places of worship, seen from outside.
12 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 7 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
Lamu Museum, Donkey Sanctuary, Swahili House Museum, Lamu Seafront.
Usita wa Mui, Pwani Mosque, Mkunguni Square.
Lamu Fort, Lamu Market, German Post Office Museum, Shia Ithna-Asheri Mosque, Riyadha Mosque.
A seafront stone verandah house later home to the District Commissioner, showing carved Lamu doors and the great ivory siwa of Pate.
An eighteenth-century house of coral stone and mangrove timber, built by Mwana Madina and furnished inside as a home, with a deep well still in use.
The old bazaar street, widest of the town's stone-paved streets, running from the Friday Mosque in the north to the square by the fort.
A Friday mosque without a visible minaret, whose origins are claimed to reach back to around 1370.
The coral-stone fort built between about 1813 and 1821 for the Sultan of Oman's garrison, a prison from 1910 to 1984.
The teaching mosque Habib Swaleh opened in 1901 on the edge of the old town, centre of the annual Maulidi.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 12 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration. 12 narration points.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every narrated point in Lamu Old Town — the Swahili Town on the Seafront, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
12 narration points, including Lamu Museum, Swahili House Museum, Lamu Seafront, Usita wa Mui and Pwani Mosque. That is about 12 minutes of narration in all, and you walk between the stops at your own pace.
Yes. It plays in your phone’s browser as you walk: no guide, no group, no app to install and no fixed start time.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~1–2 hours total, but you walk at your own pace. 12 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.