Mtoni Palace Ruins

This guide to the Mtoni Palace Ruins in Zanzibar City opens inside the harem palace Sultan Said bin Sultan built in the 1820s and 1830s as the seat of an empire funded by cloves and enslaved labor. It follows Princess Salme, one of more than thirty children raised here, recalling riding lessons, a courtyard full of loose gazelles and peacocks, and a household of wives, children, eunuchs and enslaved workers nearly a thousand strong. Stand among the roofless chambers and picture the nursery where that gilded, guarded childhood played out.