Famous Landmarks in Dar es Salaam
A sultan's coral-stone fort and German-built churches line one working harbourfront.
Dar es Salaam's landmarks sit close together along the old harbourfront, within a few streets of Sokoine Drive, tracing the city's shift from a nineteenth-century sultan's port to the administrative centre of German East Africa. The oldest structure, the Old Boma, is built of coral stone in a Swahili-coast idiom, with a carved wooden door. Within three decades the same waterfront gained two European-built churches: a Lutheran church roofed in red tile and finished in Bavarian style, and a Gothic Revival Catholic cathedral of stone with stained-glass windows. All three face the water, a legacy of a port town whose earliest substantial buildings were raised to be seen from the harbour they served.
Azania Front Lutheran Church
1898
It shows a steeply pitched, red-tiled roof with tiled canopies over each window and bright white walls, the Bavarian-inflected style German builders used in the eighteen-nineties; it stands at the edge of the city centre, facing the harbour.
Built in 1898 by German missionaries, this Lutheran church now serves as the cathedral of the local diocese and is one of the city's best-known landmarks. It stands in the city centre close to the ocean, facing the harbour. Constructed in the Bavarian style current among German builders of the period, it has a red-tiled roof, tiled canopies over the windows and bright white walls. More than a century after it was built it remains in active use as a place of worship and a fixture of the waterfront.
Photo: RIGHT TO HEALTH (CC BY 2.0)
St. Joseph's Cathedral
1897–1902
Built of stone in the Gothic Revival style, it stands directly on the harbourfront road, its pointed-arch windows including a set of stained glass behind the altar, close to a former mission house.
This Roman Catholic cathedral was built by German colonists between 1897 and 1902 and consecrated in 1905. Standing on Sokoine Drive facing the harbour, close to the former White Fathers' House, it is a Gothic church of stone and serves as the seat of the Dar es Salaam archdiocese. Among its most notable features are the stained-glass windows set behind the altar. It has remained a working cathedral for well over a century, one of the oldest church buildings on this stretch of coast.
- Although built by 1902, it was not consecrated as a Catholic church until 1905.
Photo: aj82, shifted by Rabanus Flavus (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Old Boma
1866–67
Its walls are built of coral stone, with a carved wooden door in Zanzibari style set into the entrance; it sits at the corner of Morogoro Road and Sokoine Drive, facing the harbour beside the City Hall.
One of the oldest buildings in Dar es Salaam, the Old Boma was built in 1866–67 for Majid bin Said, sultan of Zanzibar, near a palace of his that has since been demolished. He also commissioned other nearby structures, including the White Fathers' House, and German colonial administrators later restored and enlarged the building. It stands at the junction of Morogoro Road and Sokoine Drive, facing the harbour beside the City Hall, and now houses a centre for architectural heritage, with a permanent exhibition on the city's building history.
- The sultan's own palace, once next door, has since been demolished, leaving the Boma standing alone.
- It now houses a heritage centre with a permanent exhibition on the city's own architectural evolution.
Photo: Kipala (CC BY-SA 4.0)
History
Dar es Salaam was founded in the mid-nineteenth century, and its earliest surviving landmark, the Old Boma, was built in 1866–67 for Majid bin Said, sultan of Zanzibar, near a palace of his that no longer stands. After German East Africa made the town its main administrative and commercial centre, missionaries and colonial officials added stone churches: a Lutheran church in 1898 and a Catholic cathedral raised between 1897 and 1902. These buildings, and others added under German and then British rule, kept Dar es Salaam as the territory's principal city, a role it held for Tanganyika and independent Tanzania even after the capital officially moved to Dodoma in 1974, a transfer completed in 1996.