Kelele Square

Kelele Square is a small square in the Shangani area of Stone Town, historically significant as a former slave-trading site where captives were held before being sent abroad by sea. The Swahili word 'kelele' means 'noise,' and accounts of the name's origin differ — one tradition holds it recalls the noise of the slave trade itself, another that children playing loudly there before the 1964 Zanzibar Revolution gave it the name. The square was redeveloped in 1997 as part of a beautification project by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, carried out alongside the adaptive reuse of the former Telecom Building into the Zanzibar Serena Inn, with the project preserving existing trees and adding landscaping. Today the square is bordered largely by upscale hotels (including the Serena, Park Hyatt, Tembo and Africa House hotels) and bars, with the historic slave chambers nearby providing a tangible link to its earlier history.