Photo: mwanasimba from La Réunion (CC BY-SA 2.0)
A self-guided audio tour driven along the coast road north of Stone Town and inland to Kidichi, with each place a short walk from the car. It starts at Livingstone House, built around 1860 for Sultan Majid, where explorers prepared their expeditions and David Livingstone stayed for some weeks in 1866 while fitting out his last one. At Maruhubi, the country palace built for Sultan Barghash between 1880 and 1882, the Persian-style bath house is the only part that survived the fire of 1899 with its roof, and the round reservoirs are now covered with water lilies. Mtoni, a little farther north, is the oldest of the sultans' palaces on the island. Inland among the clove and coconut plantations stand the Persian baths built at Kidichi for Shihrazad, a wife of Said bin Sultan. The tour ends at Mangapwani, about twenty kilometres north of Stone Town, at the coral cave and at the man-made slave chamber, kept as a memorial to the trade that continued after it was declared over. Keep the time back to the ship in mind; on a short call, the ship's own excursion is the safer choice.
8 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 · 97 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 6 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.
A coral-stone rest house built around 1860 for Sultan Majid, where David Livingstone stayed in 1866 while fitting out his last expedition.
The ruins of Sultan Barghash's country house, built between 1880 and 1882 for his household.
A Persian-style hammam built with the palace, the only part to survive the fire of 1899 with its roof.
The ruins of Beit el-Mtoni, the oldest of the sultans' palaces on the island, half a century older than Maruhubi.
Persian baths built for Shihrazad, a wife of Said bin Sultan, on a ridge among the clove and coconut plantations.
A man-made chamber on the shore, not a cave, kept as a memorial to the slave trade that continued after it was declared over.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 8 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. 8 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 Zanzibar's Northern Palaces, Persian Baths and Mangapwani, each with its own narration.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
8 narration points, including Livingstone House, Maruhubi Palace, Maruhubi Bath House, Maruhubi Reservoir and Aqueduct and Mtoni Palace Ruins. That is about 13 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 ~3 hours with the drives total, but you walk at your own pace. 8 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.