Zanzi Café

Zanzibar Coffee House sits inside a four-story merchant building on Mkunazini Road, identified by its heavy, carved teak doors and intricate, painted balustrades. Built in eighteen eighty-five, the structure served as the private residence of Sir Tharia Topan, who held the title of Wazir to Sultan Said Bargash. As one of the most prosperous individuals on the East African coast during the nineteenth century, Topan commissioned the house with a traditional internal courtyard and elaborate window frames that remain largely as they were when he lived there.