Historic Dar es Salaam
Take a tour of Dar's
ANCIENT ARCHITECTURE
Dar es Salaam is one of the world’s fastest growing cities and its towering modern skyline is testament to its rapid development. But Tanzania’s commercial capital also has a storied history and there are many far older buildings that remain to tell it. City guide Bernard Ntahondi (@bendarchtz on Instagram) has devised a tour that connects some of this ancient architecture and here he shares his favourite historic oceanside buildings while Dar-based artist Trailing Sprout (@trailing.sprout) provides the illustrations.
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OLD BOMA
You’ll find the city’s oldest building at the junction of Sokoine drive and Morogoro road. It was built from 1860 to 1866 under the Arab sultan Majid as an official hotel for his prestigious guests. During their colonial occupation, the Germans used it as a base, enlarging it and securing its fortifications, although it still sustained damage in the Abushili war in 1889. Until 1916 the Old Boma was used by German Imperial Navy as a barracks. After WW1, the British administration
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turned it into a police station and the site also housed the naval headquarters with a prison behind. In the late 1970s it looked like the Old Boma was going to be demolished to make way for a multi-stored hotel, but it was saved at the last minute by the high court injunction to preserve the monument of the city. It currently serves as the architectural museum under Dar es Salaam Centre for Architectural Heritage.
ST JOSEPH CATHEDRAL
Located at the corner of Sokoine Drive and Bridge Street is St Joseph Catholic Cathedral. The Benedictine missionaries order of St Otillien of Bavaria laid the foundation stone of their substantial church on June 1, 1897. There was an earlier Benedictine church in Pugu, just outside the city, but it was destroyed in the Abushili War in 1889 with several Benedictine brothers and sisters being killed. The war also held up the building of St Joseph. The Gothic-style church construction completed in 1903 on the site of Dar´s first mosque – seen by the clergy, no doubt, as a symbolic replacement. Now it serves as the cathedral.
