Saint Joseph's Cathedral

This guide to Saint Joseph's Cathedral in Zanzibar City opens with a French missionary's eighteen eighty-four ledger entry pricing a seven-year-old boy at three rupees, and another describing a burned woman named Alexina bought free for a little money. It follows the French Catholic mission that carried out these purchases in Zanzibar's slave market, and the twin-spired cathedral it later raised on the same ground between eighteen ninety-three and eighteen ninety-eight, modeled on Marseille with glass and tiles shipped from France. It traces what became of the mission's wealth and what it built with it, and lingers on the spires still visible from any boat entering the harbour. Inside, a clumsy two thousand fourteen restoration erased the Old Testament scenes that once covered the walls.