Tour Audio a Dar es Salaam

Sultan Majid bin Said of Zanzibar named this city Dar es Salaam -- 'the abode of peace' in Arabic -- when he founded it around 1866 on what had been a small fishing village called Mzizima on the Swahili coast. The name stuck, which is unusual given what followed: German colonial capital, British Tanganyika administrative center, Tanzanian capital, and then -- officially -- demoted to secondary status when Dodoma replaced it in 1996. The city simply carried on being the place where everything actually happens, as cities often do when bureaucracies try to reassign their significance.

The Kariakoo market district, one of East Africa's largest covered markets, fills every morning with produce, fabric, and hardware that keeps the city functioning.

The ferry crossing from the Kivukoni dock to Kigamboni peninsula takes ten minutes over the harbor and costs almost nothing; the view back at the city from the water makes the journey worthwhile twice. Tingatinga paintings -- the distinctive flat-color wildlife art form that originated in this city in the 1960s, created by Edward Saidi Tingatinga -- are sold in studios around Msasani that have been operating for decades. Bongo Flava, the Tanzanian hip-hop genre that has spread across East Africa, came from recording studios in this city's neighborhoods, and the musical energy here at night continues to prove the point.