Ruins of Kilwa Kisiwani and Ruins of Songo Mnara
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
Seals, want-to-go and the year you stood here are recorded in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
Kilwa Kisiwani and Songo Mnara lie close together off the coast of Tanzania, about 300 kilometres south of Dar es Salaam. Kilwa Kisiwani was lived on from the 9th to the 19th century, peaked in the 13th and 14th centuries, and minted its own coins from the 11th to the 14th century.
Its traders exchanged gold and ivory from the interior for silver, carnelian, perfume, Persian faience and Chinese porcelain. Ibn Battuta stopped there in 1331 and praised it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The Great Mosque, begun in the 11th century, is the oldest standing mosque on the East African coast, and its 13th-century great dome was the largest in East Africa until the 19th century. The palace of Husuni Kubwa was built between about 1310 and 1333.
In July 1505 the Portuguese sacked and burned the town, and in the 16th century they built a fort, from which the islands' decline began. The site was inscribed in 1981 and was on the danger list from 2004 to 2014.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).