Dar es Salaam

There was a fishing settlement called Mzizima here first. The city proper begins in 1865–66, when Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar decided to develop the sheltered natural inlet on the mainland opposite his islands and gave the place its name — dār as-salām, the abode of peace. He died in 1870 and the project stalled almost immediately; for a decade or so it was a half-built idea.

The Germans revived it. The German East Africa Company established a station in 1887, and when the colonial administration moved its capital from Bagamoyo in 1891, Dar es Salaam had what Bagamoyo lacked — a harbour deep enough for steamships. The Central Railway Line, driven inland towards Lake Tanganyika, made it the outlet for a whole interior. The buildings from that period are still standing along the front: the Old Boma of 1866–67, St Joseph's Cathedral, the old hospital.

British forces took the city on 3 September 1916 after naval bombardment, and it remained the capital through the Tanganyika Territory and into independence in 1961. In 1973 the decision was taken to move the capital inland to Dodoma — a deliberate act of the ujamaa period, intended to pull development away from the coast. The move was declared complete in 1996, though in practice much of government stayed put, and the National Assembly only fully settled in Dodoma decades after the decision.

What the city did instead was grow. From about 20,000 people in 1900 and 93,000 in 1957, to 273,000 in 1967, to over 4.3 million at the 2012 census — a rate that has put Dar es Salaam among the fastest-growing cities in the world, with projections well into the teens of millions by 2030. Losing the capital did nothing to slow it, because what drives it is not government. It is the port.

Dar es Salaam is a Swahili coastal city that grew into a national one. The population is majority Muslim, with a substantial Christian minority, and the calendar reflects both — Ramadan changes the rhythm of the whole city, and Eid and Christmas are equally public occasions.

The music is the most exportable thing here. Bongo Flava — the Tanzanian fusion of hip-hop, R&B and taarab-descended melody — was made in this city, and bongo is itself Dar es Salaam's nickname, from ubongo, brains: the place you need your wits about you. Before it there was dansi, the Congolese-influenced big-band music of the independence decades, and beneath both, taarab from the islands.

The food is coastal and mixed: grilled fish and octopus, pilau and biryani, cassava, the Zanzibari-descended snacks that appear on every corner after dark. The city's South Asian community — a presence of well over a century — has shaped what people eat as much as the coast has.

The two museums worth the time are the National Museum, which holds fossil material from Olduvai including Paranthropus boisei, and the Village Museum, an open-air collection of traditional dwellings from across the country. The Nyumba ya Sanaa and the Tingatinga cooperative are where to see art actually being made — Tingatinga painting, the enamel-on-board style with its flat bright animals, began here in the 1960s and has become the country's most recognisable visual export.