Photo: Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A self-guided audio walking tour of Stone Town, Zanzibar, through its narrow lanes. It starts on the seafront at the Old Dispensary of 1887 and runs past the Ijumaa Mosque, the Old Customs House, Beit al-Sahel, the sultans' palace that became the People's Palace after the 1964 revolution, and Beit al-Ajaib, the House of Wonders of 1883, to Forodhani Gardens and the Old Fort, Ngome Kongwe. Inland it passes St Joseph's Cathedral, the Bulsara family's home, where Freddie Mercury spent his childhood, and the house of Tippu Tip, the ivory and slave trader whose caravans reached the Congo basin. Through Jaws Corner, the Hamamni Persian Baths, the Princess Salme Museum and Darajani Market, it reaches Mkunazini, the last open slave market, closed in 1873, where Christ Church Cathedral was built to mark the end of slavery and five concrete figures stand chained in a pit. It ends at the Peace Memorial Museum of 1925 and the old High Court. The walk begins a few minutes' walk from the port.
21 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 · 73 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 7 cross-referenced entries (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.
Old Dispensary, Ijumaa Mosque, Old Customs House, Palace Museum, House of Wonders, Forodhani Gardens, Old Fort.
St Joseph's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Freddie Mercury House, Kelele Square, Tippu Tip's House, Africa House.
Jaws Corner, Hamamni Persian Baths, Princess Salme Museum, Darajani Market, Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, Old Slave Market, Slave Memorial, The Peace Memorial Museum, Zanzibar High Court of Justice.
A charitable hospital begun in 1887, with carved timber balconies set with red, green and blue glass above Mizingani Road.
The ceremonial palace of 1883 with electricity and a lift, damaged in 1896 and partly collapsed in 2020, which Oman plans to rebuild.
Ngome Kongwe, built by Oman's Ya'rubi rulers in the late seventeenth century over a Portuguese church and an earlier Swahili town.
The Shangani home of the ivory and slave trader whose caravans reached Central Africa, still a private house seen from the lane.
Zanzibar's first public hammam, built for Sultan Barghash, with domed rooms fed hot water by underground channels.
Built on the site of the last open slave market after its closure in 1873, its altar said to stand where the whipping post stood.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 21 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. 21 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 Stone Town, Zanzibar — the Sultans' Seafront and the Slave Market, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
21 narration points, including Old Dispensary, Palace Museum, House of Wonders, Forodhani Gardens and Old Fort. That is about 26 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. 21 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.