The House of Wonders, Stone Town: Beit al-Ajaib

The one thing to know first

The House of Wonders is the building on nearly every photograph of the Stone Town seafront, and it cannot be visited. A section of it collapsed on 25 December 2020 while renovation work was under way. It has been a closed, fenced construction site ever since, and the most recent international monitoring of the property describes a rehabilitation that is still in its structural stages.

Anyone planning a morning around it should know that before arriving. You can see it, from Forodhani and from the water. You cannot go in.

What it was

Beit al-Ajaib was built as a ceremonial palace for Sultan Barghash. The advisory body evaluation for the World Heritage inscription gives 1883 and credits the design to a British engineer; the Zanzibar Department of Museums and Antiquities gives only the decade, the 1880s. That evaluation calls it unique in East Africa for its size, and records fretted cedar and teak panelling in the verandah and other rooms and carved doors covered in gilded texts from the Koran.

The department’s own account gives the reason for the name: its architecture and its amenities, including electricity — which the department describes as the first in sub-Saharan Africa — and later a lift. It records the building as the residence of Sayyid Hamoud bin Mohammed, who died there, then of Sayyid Ali bin Hamoud from 1902 and Sayyid Khalifa bin Haroub from 1911. It later became a government office and then a museum of history and Swahili culture. By the time of the inscription evaluation its state of conservation was already recorded as poor.

The collapse, and what has happened since

UNESCO issued an early notification of the collapse on the day it happened, recording that the section that came down was undergoing renovation. In a meeting the following month UNESCO’s representative offered condolences to the families of two people who lost their lives and wished a recovery to those injured.

Three technical missions followed. The first, from 28 January to 2 February 2021, was a team from the University of Cape Town’s Zamani Project capturing laser-scan, drone and photogrammetric data to build a metrically accurate 3D record; the same project had documented the building in 2019, before the collapse. A World Monuments Fund team of architects and structural engineers then assessed the structural damage, and a third mission reviewed the state of conservation of the whole property.

A joint UNESCO and ICCROM advisory mission in April 2024 found the site in good order and secured against entry, with scaffolding, shoring and stabilisation complete, and stability monitored by camera, visual inspection and continued 3D scanning. A joint UNESCO and ICOMOS mission in January 2025 recorded the works as progressing carefully: cracks monitored with no significant movement reported, all marble floor tiles lifted and restored where possible for reuse, and staged reinforcement of the foundations roughly 40 per cent complete. Pottery found during the excavation was taken by the Department of Museums and Antiquities for research.

The rehabilitation is funded by the Sultanate of Oman, whose Ministry of Heritage and Tourism supplies the project director. The intended end state, set out in the State Party’s own report of November 2025, is the building’s return to use as a museum.

Common questions