What a visitor can actually do here
Tippu Tip’s House is named on almost every walking route through Stone Town and it is not a museum. It is a private building that has spent years in poor condition and has been the subject of emergency repair work. There is no exhibition, no interpretation and no settled future use. What a visitor does here is stand in the lane and look at the door and the façade.
That is worth knowing before it is built into a morning, because the name suggests an institution and there is not one.
Why the building matters
UNESCO’s description of the World Heritage property names the residence of the slave trader Tippu Tip among the town’s major buildings. The joint UNESCO, ICCROM and ICOMOS monitoring mission that visited the property in July 2023 sets out why it carries weight twice over: as a fine example of a Zanzibar mansion, and for its association with a man the mission describes plainly as a notorious Zanzibar trader in enslaved people. The mission calls the building a tacit reminder of Zanzibar’s importance as one of the main slave-trading ports in East Africa — the ground on which the third of the town’s inscription criteria rests.
The advisory body evaluation for the inscription describes it as a fine example of the vernacular Arab town house, and singles out the steps in black and white marble and the carved door. Those are the two things worth looking for from the street.
The state of it
The 2023 mission records the house as a Grade I building that successive missions had reported in poor condition. Emergency stabilisation and repair had been carried out: structural and roof repairs, the replacement of rotten boriti — the mangrove poles that carry the ceilings in buildings of this type throughout the town — and the restoration of a severely decayed balcony. Repair and restoration work was under way when the mission visited.
The mission was not satisfied. It recorded that it remained highly concerned about both the future use of the house and the decision to carry out work on it without notifying the World Heritage Centre, and it asked that all work follow the principles set out in the building’s own 2019 conservation management plan.
The practical reading is that this is a building in the middle of an unresolved process. Its condition, its access and its eventual use may all change, and none of them should be assumed from a name on an itinerary.
Common questions
Can you go inside Tippu Tip’s House?
It is not a museum and has no visitor arrangements that could be established. It has been under repair and its future use is unsettled. Treat it as a building to look at from the lane.
What is there to see?
The façade, the carved door and the black and white marble steps, which the World Heritage evaluation picks out as its notable features.
Why is it protected?
It is a Grade I building and an attribute of the property’s Outstanding Universal Value, both as a fine example of a Zanzibar mansion and for its association with the slave trade on which one of the town’s inscription criteria rests.