What it is
The People’s Palace Museum, Beit el-Sahel, stands on the Stone Town seafront immediately north of the House of Wonders. The joint UNESCO, ICCROM and ICOMOS mission that visited the property in July 2023 describes it as a building of high architectural and historical value, having been the home and headquarters of the ruling Omani family of Zanzibar until the revolution of 1964.
The word “Museum” in its name is doing more work than a visitor might assume, and the honest position is that the building is a long-running conservation project whose intended future is a museum.
What the monitoring missions found
The 2023 mission set the building out as one of the long-running conservation concerns in Stone Town. Documentation work had begun in 2017 and restoration was progressing very slowly. Structural weakness had led to walls being temporarily propped. Shoring and stabilisation had been carried out, but the mission found the building not in good repair and not well maintained, with artefacts, furniture and boxes of objects stored haphazardly in dusty rooms.
Work on the building is being carried out by the Consulate of the Sultanate of Oman, and the Zanzibar authorities told the mission that studies of the building’s condition, the restoration and its reinstatement as a museum were under way. By the joint UNESCO and ICOMOS advisory mission of January 2025 the project was reported to be at an advanced stage of design, with drawings and tender documents received by the conservation authority. In its state of conservation report of November 2025 the State Party undertook to keep submitting documents for each stage of the rehabilitation of both this building and the House of Wonders.
The burial ground beside it
The royal cemetery adjoins the palace and is part of the same site. The 2023 mission recorded that it had been cleaned up after a period of neglectful use and was under restoration, with an adjacent building proposed as an information centre for it.
The World Heritage evaluation notes one feature in particular: a half-finished tomb with delicately fluted columns, begun by Seyyid Majid during his sultanate between 1856 and 1870, on which work stopped after objections from the Ibadhi sect to which the royal house belonged. Members of the royal house are buried there.
Planning around it
Whether any part of the palace is open to visitors on a given day cannot be established from here. Zanzibar’s Department of Museums and Antiquities, which holds the island’s museums and monuments, could not be reached at all during this research — its website refuses connections — so this page records it as unreachable rather than as closed. Ask locally before building a morning around it.
The building was documented in three dimensions by the University of Cape Town’s Zamani Project in 2015, which is why a detailed record of it exists independently of its current condition. The wider picture of what is and is not open in Zanzibar’s museums is in the museum tours guide.
Common questions
Is the Palace Museum open?
That could not be confirmed. The managing authority’s website is unreachable, and international monitoring missions in 2023 and 2025 describe the building as a restoration project rather than a working museum. Check locally.
What was it before?
The home and headquarters of Zanzibar’s ruling Omani family until the 1964 revolution, on the seafront next to the House of Wonders, with the royal cemetery adjoining it.
Is the royal cemetery part of the same site?
Yes. It adjoins the palace, was cleaned up after neglect and is under restoration, and an adjacent building has been proposed as an information centre for it.