Zanzibar History: Explore Stone Town & Prison Island

Uncover the rich history and spice trade of Zanzibar on a Stone Town and Spice Tour. Explore historical sites, visit a spice farm, and see giant tortoise on Prison Island.

Duration: 5 hours
Cancellation: 24 hours
Highlights
  • Prison Island - Changuu Private Island - On Prison Island, giant tortoises roam freely, offering opportunities to feed, photograph, and even massage them. Additionally, visitors can learn about the island’s rich history.
  • Stone Town - This tour includes visits to the Old Fort, Freddy Mercury’s house, Tipu Tipu’s house, and the House of…
What's Included
  • In-vehicle air conditioning
  • Lunch
  • All fees and/or taxes
What's Not Included
  • Tips to our guide
  • Government fees
Additional Information

This tour provides an opportunity to learn about the history of Old Town and the various phases of Zanzibar’s colonization with the help of our knowledgeable guide. Visitors can explore historical sites such as the Old Slave Market, Darajani Market, Old Fort, Freddy Mercury’s house, the House of Wonders, and Tippu Tippu’s house, among others….

Location
Prison Island - Changuu Private Island
Off the Coast From Stone Town, Shangani
Cancellation Policy

For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.

Customer Ratings
4.8
(56 Ratings)
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1 star
Hashilmohamedk
Aug 2, 2025
A wonderful holiday with best guide in Zanzibar - We had really enjoyable trip and lovely experiences with both spice and stone town. our guide gave us all we wanted, he went far to give us some fascinating tips of testing baobab sweet which was an amazing tes. We would like to do this again and again with you guys and it's worth it 👌. Asante sana
Review provided by Tripadvisor
36salumh
Jul 10, 2025
DO NOT MISS THIS COMBO 😘 - Do not miss to do this combo during your stay in Zanzibar. Abu was great and amazing person on his professional, he was very helpful and more importantly he explained everything we wanted to hear about Stone Town, Spice farm and Prison Tortoise. The food was too much 😃 in fact we ate delicious swahili food in stone town. The duo of Abu and our driver was the best. Do not Miss this Combo with Abu
Review provided by Tripadvisor
886gabrielw
Apr 15, 2025
Visit to Prison Islands, Nakupenda sandbank, and Stone Town - We visited the Prison Islands, Nakupenda beach and Stone town. It was worth our while. The tour guide was very knowledgeable as he always gave a brief history of the areas visited. I’ll recommend this. Just awesome.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Scenic43259330474
Mar 10, 2025
Our guide gave us wonderful Experience - Lovely experience during this time, we booked this trip all ways from home and couldn't trust this company from the beginning, honestly speaking they gave us wonderful experience on island. From the City to the island, our guide Abu gave us wonderful details and my husband was fully impressed by his great job. Thank you very much for taking care of us and I can highly recommend others
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Russell_e
Feb 12, 2025
We visited Stone Town,... - We visited Stone Town, Prison Island and Jambo Spice Farm with our guide Abu. He was very informative and a great guide to show us around. His knowledge of the history of Prison Island in particular was excellent and we had a really fun time.
Review provided by Viator
Andri_j
Jan 24, 2025
Must sees in one day - I really enjoyed this combo of experiences. We saw all the must-see items and were given enough space to enjoy shops if we wanted to. The food was amazing and the guide was super informative about everything we saw. 100% recommend to others!
Review provided by Viator
Trinai4
Jan 24, 2025
A great day around ! - My mother and I went on the stone town, prison island, and spice farm tour today. Abu was an absolute pleasure to be around! From start to finish, he was very knowledgeable and informative. He regularly checks in with you to get feedback and make sure you are enjoying yourself. The spice farm was great! Stone town was nice to walk all around it and get the information about the history and the people of Zanzibar. Prison island was an adventure as it was windy so the water was a bit rough to get there, but made the trip all the better. The food we had for lunch was delicious. Very very pleased with the tour, this company, and Abu as our guide.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Davidrw707pu
Sep 23, 2024
Must do tour on Stone town - Abu was the perfect guide. The tour was a great balance of being very informative whilst getting a very authentic feel for Stone Town and Zanzibar, great vip treatment on Prison island and amazing to get the history of Stone Town, the architecture, markets and way of life. The Tour was also the perfect amount of time (4 hours). Abu was great company more of a friend then an guide and everything on the tour was seem-less, he also couldn’t be more helpful trying to assist with the rest of our stay in Zanzibar. Can’t recommend this tour / company enough.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Heather_r
Jul 1, 2025
Good Spice farm and Guide, TERRIBLE Company & DESCRIPTION - Service of our guide was great! Knowledgeable about the spice farm was great, and invaluable in Stone Town. However. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE DESCRIPTION! We went to the spice farm, then into town, but there was NO WAY we would’ve had time to go out to Prison Island. But the price included the admission AND a water taxi! For my party of 5, that was $105 we paid for something the tour operator never did with us. I reached out to the tour operator AND Viator, for a refund of that portion, and crickets.
Review provided by Viator
Hania_b
Dec 2, 2024
Great Historical Tour - Good tour with Abu! We saw Prison Island and Stone Town. The tour states a Spice Farm visit is included, but our guide said they changed this and it’s no longer included. Other than that, everything else was great.
Review provided by Viator
From $165
up to 15 guests
1 - Adult
Cancellation: Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the start of your experience (local time).