Nairobi is only 125 years old, but it archives millions: Leakey's hominid fossils, the railway camp that became a capital, the midnight flag-raising of 12 December 1963 and the 1998 embassy blast. Three days of museums, monuments and colonial streets.
Founded 1930 and rebuilt in 2008, the national museum holds the Leakey family's hominid finds — the 1.6-million-year-old Turkana Boy and Cranium 1470 from Koobi Fora among them. Open daily 08:30–17:30.
Behind the 1906 Bank of India facade sit the Murumbi collections: Kenya's second vice-president amassed West African masks, Ethiopian crosses, ivory and 8,000 rare books before selling them to the state in 1976.
Opened in 1971 to hold onto tradition after independence, Bomas reconstructs the homesteads of eleven Kenyan peoples — Kikuyu, Maasai, Luhya, Giriama, Taita — around an arena where resident dancers perform daily.
Gallerist Alan Donovan built this Malian mud-architecture house in 1994 on a ridge above Nairobi National Park. Inside is one of Africa's great private holdings of tribal art, textiles, beadwork and Murumbi-era pieces.
Opened 1971 next to the 1929 station, this yard tells the story of the 1896–1901 Uganda Railway — the 'Lunatic Line' that created Nairobi in 1899. The carriage a Tsavo man-eater dragged Superintendent Ryall from stands outside.
A quiet garden on the footprint of the US embassy destroyed by an al-Qaeda truck bomb on 7 August 1998, which killed 213 people here. Twisted steel from the blast stands as sculpture; the victims' names are cut into granite.
The 1913 Provincial Commissioner's office — nicknamed 'Hatches, Matches and Dispatches' for the births, marriages and deaths registered in it — now shows Joseph and Sheila Murumbi's jewellery, stamps and African art.
Karl Henrik Nøstvik's 1973 tower, its conical amphitheatre modelled on a traditional hut, was Kenyatta's architectural statement of independence. The 28th-floor helipad looks down on Parliament and the original CBD grid.
The 1912 bungalow where Karen Blixen ran a failing coffee farm from 1917 until 1931, later the setting of Out of Africa. Her furniture, the grinding stones, the coffee dryer and the Ngong Hills view all survive.
Built in 1908 for a Swedish trading agent, Swedo House is among the oldest standing structures in Nairobi and stood on land Blixen farmed. It now anchors a garden restaurant under the original fig trees.
The ground where the Union Jack came down and Kenya's flag rose at midnight on 12 December 1963. The 24-metre monument and the Museum of Kenyan History, reopened here in 2022, trace the Mau Mau war and independence.
Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee — the Karachi-born contractor who supplied the labour that built the Uganda Railway — handed this square to the young town in 1906. His statue of Queen Victoria still faces the office blocks.