A tradition without an official record
The Livingstone Memorial Church at the Catholic mission in Bagamoyo is on most itineraries for the town. The tradition attached to it is that David Livingstone’s body, carried from the interior by his companions after his death in 1873, rested here before being taken on to Zanzibar and then to England. It is a powerful story and it is the reason the building is pointed out.
It is also not on any official record that can be retrieved. That is worth saying plainly before you plan around it.
What was checked
Tanzania’s tentative World Heritage submission for the Central Slave and Ivory Trade Route sets out, centre by centre, what it regards as the significant evidence at each of the six places it covers. Its Bagamoyo section names the Caravan Serai, the Von Wissmann block, the Old Market, the Customs House, the Old Fort, the freedom village at the mission and the mission museum. It names no church and no Livingstone memorial.
The National Museum of Tanzania runs historical centres at nine sites around the country and Bagamoyo is not one of them. Tanzania Forest Services, which does promote the stone town, lists its significant buildings and does not include a church. Bagamoyo District Council names three tourist attractions for the whole district and this is not among them.
The one Livingstone memorial that is on the national antiquities register is several hundred kilometres away, at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika — the Dr David Livingstone Memorial Museum, at the other end of the same caravan road. If a search has brought you here looking for the documented Livingstone site in Tanzania, that is it.
What to do with the building anyway
Go and see it. It stands in the compound of the mission, which is the best-evidenced site in Bagamoyo and worth the visit on its own account, and a chapel on those grounds is part of the same institution whose archive the national submission singles out for the quality of its documentation. Ask the mission staff what their own records say about the building, which is a far better question than asking a guide outside the gate.
Treat the Livingstone connection as tradition rather than as a documented fact, which is the same posture the town guide recommends for the three larger claims made about this town. The general subject is covered under historical walking tours.
Practical notes
It is a religious building inside an active mission compound, not a monument with opening hours. Dress and behave as you would in any church, do not photograph people at prayer, and go outside service times if you want to look properly.
Common questions
Did Livingstone’s body really rest here?
That is the tradition and it is widely repeated. No authority reachable online documents it, and this page does not assert it.
Is it the oldest church in East Africa?
That claim circulates too. It is not established by any reachable source, and it is a claim of the same kind as several others about Bagamoyo that have not survived examination.
Where is the documented Livingstone material?
Ujiji, near Kigoma, where the memorial museum is on the national antiquities register.