Bagamoyo & Pwani

Bagamoyo grew out of the much older Swahili settlement of Kaole, founded around the 8th to 9th century and an important trading town by the 13th century, whose ruins still include one of the oldest mosques on the East African mainland. The town of Bagamoyo itself was established in the late 18th century as a caravan station; its name is popularly linked to the Swahili phrase 'bwaga moyo', meaning to lay down or unburden one's heart.

In the 19th century Bagamoyo became one of the coast's most important ports for the ivory and slave trade, the point from which enslaved people and goods carried from the interior were shipped across to Zanzibar. The Old Fort, built around 1860, was used to hold captives awaiting transport. Missionaries also arrived, and the Catholic Freedom Village and mission became a refuge for freed slaves and a centre of early Christian activity on the mainland.

When Germany colonised the region, Bagamoyo was chosen as the first capital of German East Africa, and for a time its administration governed the whole colony. The capital was moved to Dar es Salaam in 1891 as that town's deeper harbour better suited modern shipping, and Bagamoyo's fortunes gradually declined. Its faded grandeur, historic buildings and poignant past have since made it a treasured heritage destination and home to a renowned college of arts.