College of Arts

Bagamoyo

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Located about 500m southeast of Bagamoyo along the road to Dar es Salaam is this renowned theatre and arts college, home of the national dance company. When school is in session there are occasional performances, and it’s usually possible to arrange drumming or dancing lessons.

The annual highlight is the Bagamoyo Arts Festival, usually held around late September or October. The festival features traditional dance and drumming performances, acrobatics displays, drumming workshops and much more.

The festival is not the most organised – advance information on schedules is rarely available – but it is a good way to meet Tanzania's up-and-coming artists and performers, and to get introduced to local talent and culture.

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Nearby Bagamoyo attractions

1. Caravan Serai Museum

1.02 MILES

This undistinguished museum has a small display documenting the slave trade. It's at the town entrance, just past and diagonally opposite CRDB bank. More…

2. Bagamoyo Town

1.08 MILES

With its cobwebbed portals and crumbling German-era colonial buildings, central Bagamoyo, or Mji Mkongwe (Stone Town) as it’s known locally, is well worth…

3. Catholic Museum

1.9 MILES

About 2km northwest of town and reached via a long, mango-tree-shaded avenue is the Catholic mission and museum, one of Bagamoyo’s highlights, with well…

4. Kaole Ruins

2 MILES

Just southeast of Bagamoyo are these atmospheric ruins. At their centre are the remains of a 13th-century mosque, which is one of the oldest in mainland…

5. Kunduchi Ruins

24.84 MILES

These overgrown but worthwhile ruins include the remnants of a late 15th-century mosque as well as Arabic graves from the 18th or 19th centuries, with…

6. Mbweni Ruins

25.48 MILES

The upmarket suburb of Mbweni, 5km south of Zanzibar Town, was a Universities Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) base and settlement for former slaves in…

7. State House

26.83 MILES

Zanzibar's presidential palace was originally designed by British architect John Sinclair as the British Residency in 1903. Today it is not open to…

8. Beit el-Amani

26.9 MILES

This domed building, formerly the Peace Memorial Museum and now an archive, dates to 1925, when it was inaugurated as a memorial to the accords ending WWI…

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