Changuu Island (Prison Island)

Changuu Island, widely known as Prison Island (also called Kibandiko or Quarantine Island), lies about 5.6 km northwest of Stone Town in the Zanzibar Channel and measures roughly 800 m by 230 m. In the 1860s it was used to hold enslaved people prior to their sale or transport. In 1893 the British First Minister of Zanzibar, Lloyd Mathews, bought the island and built a prison complex there in 1894, but it never held prisoners; instead it served as a quarantine station for yellow-fever cases arriving from the East African mainland. Today the island is a government-run tourist destination, home to a colony of endangered Aldabra giant tortoises originally gifted by the British governor of Seychelles in 1919, alongside the historic prison ruins and swimming beaches.