Lamu Old Town
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How it came to be
Lamu is a town on an island off the Kenyan coast, about 350 km north of Mombasa, and has been lived in without a break for more than 700 years. It first appears in writing in 1441, when the Arab traveller Abu-al-Mahasini recorded meeting a judge from Lamu in Mecca.
In 1506 a Portuguese fleet under Tristão da Cunha blockaded the town and forced its king to agree to an annual tribute of 600 meticals. From the late 17th to the early 19th century Lamu flourished as an Omani protectorate, governed by a council of elders called the Yumbe. The seafront fort, begun by a Sultan of Pate, was finished in the early 1820s.
Its houses of coral stone and mangrove timber, with inner courtyards, verandas and carved wooden doors, mix Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian and European styles. In 2001 the town was inscribed as the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa.
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