HERITAGE RECORD · 173

Stone Town of Zanzibar

桑给巴尔石头城

The official record, selection criteria and sourced cultural context.

World Heritage record

The Stone Town of Zanzibar is a fine example of the Swahili coastal trading towns of East Africa. It retains its urban fabric and townscape virtually intact and contains many fine buildings that reflect its particular culture, which has brought together and homogenized disparate elements of the cultures of Africa, the Arab region, India, and Europe over more than a millennium.

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Selection criteria

This property was inscribed under the following World Heritage Convention criteria.

(ii)An important interchange of human values in architecture, technology, arts, town planning or landscape design.

(iii)A unique or exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or civilisation.

Cultural archive

Record lead

UNESCO record lead

Brief synthesis Located on a promontory jutting out from the western side of Unguja island into the Indian Ocean, the Stone Town of Zanzibar is an outstanding example of a Swahili trading town.

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