Tadjoura is the oldest town in Djibouti and one of the most history-laden places on the whole Red Sea coast. It is called 'the white city' for its whitewashed houses that gleam under the tropical sun, and 'the city of the seven mosques' for the minarets that rise among its alleyways. For centuries it was the capital of an Afar sultanate that controlled trade between the Ethiopian highlands and the sea. Salt, coffee and ivory passed through its port, and so did enslaved people.
Set on the northern shore of the Gulf of Tadjoura, across from the capital, it moves at a different pace: white houses, turquoise sea, fishing boats and the murmur of prayer. Behind it rise the Goda Mountains, green and cool, home to the Day Forest and the villages of Randa and Bankoualé. A few kilometres away is Sables Blancs beach, the loveliest in the country. All of this makes Tadjoura the gateway to northern Djibouti.
The most beautiful way to arrive is to cross the gulf by ferry from the capital and watch the white city slowly appear over the water. This guide covers what to see in Tadjoura, how to get there, how to use it as a base for the mountains and the beaches, and why this small town of whitewashed houses is one of Djibouti's historical and human treasures.
Tadjoura is the oldest town in Djibouti, a port that has existed for many centuries and was mentioned by medieval Arab travellers. It belonged to the great Islamic states of the Horn of Africa, first the Ifat Sultanate and then the Adal Sultanate. Above all, it was the seat of the Sultanate of Tadjoura, an Afar state that controlled trade between Ethiopia and the Red Sea, including the slave trade. It passed through Ottoman, Egyptian and finally French hands before becoming part of independent Djibouti. Its full history is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓On the northern shore of the gulf, the 'white city' of Tadjoura holds a thousand years of Islamic history, and behind it rise the cool Goda Mountains with the country's last forest.
Read the history of The Gulf of Tadjoura and the Goda Mountains →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Tadjoura is the oldest town in Djibouti and one of the most important historic ports on the coast of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Its origins are lost in the Middle Ages: it is mentioned in the chronicles of Arab travellers who sailed these coasts centuries ago, when the modern capital, Djibouti City, did not even exist. Set on the northern shore of the gulf that bears its name, it was for a long time the urban centre of the whole region.
Its importance came from geography: Tadjoura was where the caravan routes coming down from the Ethiopian highlands reached the sea, and where goods were shipped to Arabia and the rest of the Islamic world. Salt from the interior, coffee, ivory and hides passed through its port, and so, for centuries, did slaves captured in the highlands of Abyssinia, a trade that left a sad mark on the town's history.
That role as a hinge between the African interior and the maritime world of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea made Tadjoura a cosmopolitan town for its time, in constant contact with Yemen and the Swahili coast. Hence its whitewashed houses and its strong Islamic identity, which still define 'the white town of the seven mosques' today.
For centuries Tadjoura was part of the great Islamic states that dominated the medieval Horn of Africa. It fell within the orbit of the Ifat Sultanate and, later, of the powerful Adal Sultanate, which in the 15th and 16th centuries fought long wars with the Christian Ethiopian Empire for control of the region. In that world of trading and warrior sultanates, the coastal ports, Tadjoura among them, were key to trade and to the link with Arabia.
As Adal declined, the Sultanate of Tadjoura emerged in its own right, an Afar state centred on the town and its port. This sultanate controlled trade between the Ethiopian highlands and the sea, and its sultan was a figure of weight across the region. The town's Great Mosque, whose origins go back to the 16th century, bears witness to that era of commercial and religious splendour.
The Sultanate of Tadjoura kept up relations, sometimes alliances, sometimes tensions, with other powers in the area and with the empires that were reaching the Red Sea. Its prosperity rested on control of the trade routes, and its history is that of a small but influential Afar maritime state, one of the few that existed in what is now Djibouti.
Like every strategic port on the Red Sea, Tadjoura was coveted by the great powers. Over the centuries it came under the influence or control of different powers: the Ottoman Empire, which ruled much of the Red Sea coast, and later Khedival Egypt in the 19th century, which in its expansion came to control points along this coast. These were the years when the Red Sea, above all after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, became a vital route for world trade.
In that era of imperial rivalries, France entered the scene. After acquiring Obock in 1862 and founding Djibouti City in 1888, the French gradually extended their influence around the gulf, signing treaties with the Afar chiefs and sultans, including the Sultan of Tadjoura, to secure control of the region. Tadjoura thus ended up part of the colony of French Somaliland, later the French Territory of the Afars and the Issas.
With the founding and rise of Djibouti City as a major colonial port and the terminus of the railway to Addis Ababa, Tadjoura lost economic importance to the new capital. The 'white town', once the great port of the region, remained a beautiful historic town on the northern shore, while power and trade were concentrated on the southern shore.
With Djibouti's independence in 1977, Tadjoura became a town of the new republic and capital of the region that bears its name. Its population is mostly Afar, and the town has felt closely the tensions between the Afar and the Issa-Somali communities that shaped the country's politics. During the civil war of the 1990s, between the government and the Afar FRUD guerrillas, the north of the country, including the Tadjoura region, saw part of the fighting, until the peace agreements that ended it.
In recent decades, Tadjoura has been looking for a new role. Its port has been modernised, with a new quay intended partly for trade and for exporting goods (such as potash from the Assal area), as part of Djibouti's push to become a major regional logistics hub. At the same time, the town and its surroundings, the beaches of the gulf, the Goda Mountains and the Day Forest, have been emerging as a tourist destination.
Better connections, with the ferry to the capital and the roads heading north, have helped bring Tadjoura out of its isolation. The 'white town' keeps its traditional atmosphere and its rich historical weight, but it is also looking to the future, between maritime trade and a tourism that is slowly discovering its charms.
Today, Tadjoura is one of Djibouti's great human and historical treasures. Its old town of whitewashed houses, its seven mosques, its fishing port and its unhurried atmosphere offer an experience very different from the capital: here you can feel the old Islamic coast of the Red Sea, with centuries of trade and faith etched into every white alleyway. It is a place to walk slowly, chat with people and let yourself fall into a different rhythm.
Its location also makes it the gateway to northern Djibouti. A few kilometres away is Sables Blancs beach, the most beautiful in the country; behind it rise the cool Goda Mountains, with the Day Forest and the villages of Randa and Bankoualé; and further north lies historic Obock. Tadjoura works as a base for exploring that whole world of sea and mountains, so different from the desert and salt lakes of the interior.
Arriving by ferry across the gulf, watching the white town appear above the turquoise water and then getting lost in its alleyways is one of the most memorable experiences of a trip to Djibouti. In the country's oldest town, history is not kept in museums: it is alive, in the whitewashed houses, in the minarets and in the people who keep making Tadjoura what it has always been, a port open to the sea and to the world.
