Stone Town: The Latest Architecture and News

In historic Stone Town, the main city in Zanzibar, Tanzania, the story of one cinema building and its imminent restoration is reflective of the city's history and the narrative of cinemas generally. The early twentieth century saw the advent of cinema construction, peaking in mid-century, before declining against competition with multiplexes and home television. While many were demolished or irreparably altered, many also lay abandoned, like time capsules for a bygone era. They are a snapshot of the architecture styles and methods of their time, acting as a reminder of their role in their communities. Restoring and adapting a cinema like the Majestic is a recognition of its heritage and community value.

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A defining feature of the architecture of the Swahili Coast—apart from its coral stone buildings and mangrove poles used to elaborate those structures—is undoubtedly the ornamented door so commonly found across this coastal area. Richly decorated, and historically often layered with meaning, these doors, apart from serving the more utilitarian function of an entrance, were also signifiers of status and wealth. From this Swahili Coast to the Arabian Peninsula, these doors of the coast are very much markers of their location, representative of trade and migration.

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Cities have been, and will always be multi-faceted, elastic sites. They are settlements in continuous evolution, molded by proximity to natural resources, by migrating populations, and by capital. Despite the diversity in the urban character of disparate cities, it has been said that cities look alike now more than ever before, a uniformity that means a glass-and-steel tower in Singapore would not look out of place in Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex.

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The world of travelling is a multifaceted one. There are the everyday trips one takes for work or school, commuting to a set location during the week, usually within the confines of a city. There are the longer trips too, the trips which usually involve getting into an aeroplane to visit someplace a bit farther from where the traveller usually resides. These trips are frequently done for business purposes, but for those who have the means to afford it, these trips are undertaken for learning and leisure – where the traveller can be defined as a “tourist”.

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