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

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2. Bagamoyo Town

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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

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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

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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

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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

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7. State House

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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

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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…