Zanzibar

Off the East African coast lies an island whose very name conjures cloves, dhows and the mingling of continents. Zanzibar, the largest island of an archipelago belonging to Tanzania, was for centuries the trading heart of the Swahili coast, where African, Arab, Persian and Indian worlds met and merged. Its old stone town, white beaches and fragrant spice plantations carry the memory of a place that once supplied much of the world's cloves and stood at the dark centre of the East African slave trade.

The principal island, properly called Unguja but widely known as Zanzibar, covers about 1,666 square kilometres of low coral terrain in the Indian Ocean, separated from mainland Tanzania by a channel some 35 kilometres wide. It is a coral island rather than a volcanic one, gently undulating with a highest point of only around 120 metres, fringed by mangroves, lagoons and reefs. Its tropical climate and fertile soils made it ideal for the spice plantations, especially cloves, that defined its colonial economy. The clear, warm waters around it now sustain a thriving tourism and fishing industry.

Zanzibar rose to wealth and power as the seat of the Sultanate of Oman, whose rulers moved their capital here in the nineteenth century to control the trade in spices, ivory and enslaved people. Stone Town, the old quarter of its capital, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a warren of coral-stone houses, carved doors and bustling bazaars. After a bloody revolution in 1964, the islands united with mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania, though Zanzibar retains a distinct identity and considerable autonomy, its Swahili culture and layered history setting it apart from the African mainland.

• Tanzania
  Roof of Africa, cradle of safari, and the Swahili shore located in
• Africa
  The world's second-largest continent and humanity's birthplace located on
• Indian Ocean
  The world's third-largest and warmest ocean surrounded by