Dar es Salaam is urban, vibrant, real Tanzania: a metropolis of several million people growing at full speed on the Indian Ocean coast, with its port full of ships, its overflowing markets, its chaotic traffic and its unstoppable energy. It's not a postcard city, nor the reason most people travel to Tanzania —they usually come for the safaris or for Zanzibar—, but it is the country's gateway and a place worth getting to know to understand the nation's pulse.
Its name means 'abode of peace' in Arabic, and although the urban pace is far from peaceful, the city keeps the stamp of the coast's Swahili culture: Kiswahili spoken everywhere, mosques and churches, cooking built on spices and seafood, a mix of African, Arab, Indian and European influences. Here skyscrapers and working-class neighbourhoods, traditional markets and shopping centres, the German and British colonial legacy and 21st-century Tanzania all live side by side.
This guide covers Dar es Salaam with a practical eye: what to see on a short stop (museums, markets, the coast), how to get around a big, traffic-heavy city using DART, taxis or apps, how to arrive by plane, ferry or the new train, where to sleep and eat on any budget, and how to make the most of the nearby beaches and day trips. Ideal for anyone stopping over before Zanzibar, Mafia or a southern safari who wants to get the most out of the big city.
Dar es Salaam is a relatively young city by Swahili coast standards. It began as the small fishing village of Mzizima, on a sheltered natural harbour. In the mid-19th century, Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar decided to found a city there, which he named Dar es Salaam ('abode of peace'), around 1865-1866, although the project faded after his death. The real take-off came with German colonialism: at the end of the 19th century, Dar became the capital of German East Africa, and the Germans built the port, the central railway and much of the street layout. After the First World War, the city passed into British hands as the capital of the Tanganyika Territory. It was the centre of the independence movement led by Julius Nyerere, and with independence in 1961 and the creation of Tanzania in 1964 it became established as the country's capital and economic engine, a role it keeps even though the political capital moved to Dodoma in 1996. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The Tanzania of the Indian Ocean and the great rivers: Dar es Salaam, the economic capital and Swahili port, and the vast southern reserves such as Nyerere National Park and Mikumi.
Read the history of The south and the coast →They depart from Zanzibar, 70 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Unlike the old Swahili cities such as Kilwa or Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam is a relatively young city. In the mid-19th century, where Tanzania's largest city now stands, there was a modest fishing village called Mzizima ('the healthy town', in Swahili). It looked out over an exceptionally sheltered natural harbour, an almost enclosed lagoon that made an ideal anchorage.
The city owes its founding to a sultan. Around 1865-1866, Majid bin Said, Sultan of Zanzibar, decided to build a new city and a summer residence there, drawn by the qualities of the harbour. He named it Dar es Salaam, an Arabic phrase usually translated as 'haven of peace' or 'abode of peace'. The sultan began building palaces and other buildings, but the project lost momentum after his death in 1870. For some years the new city stagnated and shrank back to a small settlement.
The potential of that harbour would not go unnoticed, though. In the following decades, as the European powers arrived in the 'Scramble for Africa', Dar es Salaam found a new and decisive push. This time it came from German colonialism, which would make the city the centre of its empire in East Africa.
Dar es Salaam truly became a major city under German colonialism. In the last decades of the 19th century, as the European powers carved up Africa, Germany took control of a vast territory in East Africa (today's mainland Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi), which became German East Africa (Deutsch-Ostafrika). Around 1891 the Germans chose Dar es Salaam as the colony's capital because of its excellent harbour.
Under German rule the city was completely transformed. The port was built up and modernised, a street grid was laid out, and administrative buildings, churches (such as the Lutheran Azania Front church by the sea), hospitals and residences went up, many of which still stand. Above all, the Germans began building the Central Line railway, which would link Dar es Salaam with the interior as far as Lake Tanganyika. It was key to trade and to control of the territory.
Colonial rule was not peaceful. African resistance erupted in the Maji Maji Rebellion (1905-1907), one of the largest anti-colonial uprisings in African history. The Germans crushed it brutally, and huge numbers of Africans died from the violence and from a famine deliberately caused as a war tactic. This chapter deserves to be remembered with the seriousness it calls for: the colonial order that built modern Dar was imposed at an enormous human cost.
The First World War changed Dar es Salaam's fate. East Africa saw a long military campaign between the German colonial troops and the British and their allies. The Germans were led by General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, who fought a stubborn guerrilla war. Much of the fighting was done by African soldiers and porters recruited by both sides, and the war caused immense suffering for the local population.
After Germany's defeat, the Treaty of Versailles (1919) divided up the German Empire's colonies. Most of German East Africa, including Dar es Salaam, passed to the United Kingdom as a League of Nations mandate under the name Tanganyika. Dar es Salaam remained the territory's capital and main port.
The city kept growing during the British period. It became firmly established as an administrative and commercial centre, with a sharply divided society. There was a British administration, an Indian and Arab community devoted to trade (Indians played a central role in the urban economy), and an African majority. The port and the railway kept Dar as the territory's main gateway. In this urban setting, with its mix of peoples and its growing African working and educated class, the movement that would lead to independence took root.
Dar es Salaam was at the heart of the struggle for independence. The city was where TANU (Tanganyika African National Union) was founded and grew. It was led by Julius Nyerere, a teacher turned politician who would become the country's founding figure. The independence movement ran a remarkably peaceful campaign that used Swahili as a unifying language, and it achieved its goal: Tanganyika gained independence from the United Kingdom on 9 December 1961, and Nyerere became its first leader.
A few years later, in 1964, came a decisive event. The Zanzibar Revolution of January that year overthrew the sultan on the islands. In April 1964, Tanganyika and Zanzibar united to form the United Republic of Tanzania, whose name combines the two parts (Tan-ganyika and Zan-zibar). Dar es Salaam became the capital of the new country and the centre of its political and economic life.
Under Nyerere's leadership, Tanzania adopted Ujamaa, a model of African socialism based on the communal village, self-reliance and national unity, set out in the 1967 Arusha Declaration. Ujamaa's economic results were disputed and difficult. Even so, Nyerere, known as Mwalimu ('the teacher'), left a lasting legacy: a strong national identity, a cohesive country with more than a hundred ethnic groups, and remarkable stability compared with many of its neighbours. Dar es Salaam grew along with independent Tanzania and became a major metropolis.
In 1996 Tanzania officially moved its political capital to Dodoma, in the geographical centre of the country. The move had been decided decades earlier to decentralise the country and develop the interior. Even so, Dar es Salaam has always remained the country's real heart. It has the main port, one of the most important in East Africa, as well as the largest airport, most of the economic and financial activity and much of the cultural life. Its population has made it one of the fastest-growing cities on the continent, with several million people and projections of huge further growth.
Today's Dar is a city in full transformation, and its contrasts are plain to see. There are modern high-rises and working-class neighbourhoods, a growing port, shopping malls and traditional markets such as Kariakoo, and notorious traffic jams. There are also infrastructure projects such as the DART bus rapid transit system and the new standard gauge railway (SGR) that links the city with the interior. Its people combine the Swahili heritage of the coast with people from all over Tanzania and communities of Indian, Arab and European origin.
For travellers, Dar es Salaam is above all the country's gateway: the place to catch the ferry to Zanzibar or Mafia, a flight to Kilimanjaro or a safari, or the train to the interior. But it is also a city worth a proper look. Its bustle carries the pulse of the real, 21st-century Tanzania, very different from the savannahs and beaches on the postcards. Getting to know it, even for a day, helps you understand where this young and diverse East African country comes from and where it is heading.
