Bagamoyo’s name is said to derive from a Swahili phrase meaning “lay down your heart” — a reference to its dark history as one of East Africa’s largest 19th-century trading ports for ivory and enslaved people, and the starting point for European expeditions into the interior.

The town later became the first capital of German East Africa before administration moved to Dar es Salaam. Its Old Town, with weathered coral-stone buildings, the Caravan Serai and Old Fort, is a genuinely evocative walk through this history — quieter and far less commercialised than Stone Town.

Just north, the Kaole Ruins preserve the remains of a Swahili settlement and mosque dating to the 13th century, among the oldest on the East African coast.