Tanà keeps its history in layers: royal hills fortified with zebu-fat mortar, cliffs where Christians were hurled in 1849, and a colonial ville basse built on drained rice paddies. Three days follow the chronology uphill.
UNESCO-listed hilltop capital of King Andrianampoinimerina, 21km north. Ramparts mortared with zebu fat and egg white, a 7-tonne disc gate rolled shut each dusk, his single-room rosewood house of 1788, and the royal bathing basins.
The oldest of the twelve sacred hills, seat of King Ralambo, who in the 16th century first named the land Imerina and taught his people to eat zebu beef. Ancient tombs, a sacred fig and a caretaker who opens the gate on request.
Radama I's country palace of 1828, later the retreat of Queen Ranavalona I. The restored wooden rova now holds ethnographic rooms on the eighteen Malagasy peoples: Sakalava funerary posts, Mahafaly aloalo and royal silverwork.
The kabary ground where sovereigns addressed the people from the rock platform, and where Ranavalona II proclaimed Christianity the state religion in 1869. The 1890 stone cathedral behind it faces the old execution precipice.
The pink 1872 palace of Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony, husband of three successive queens. Its museum shelters the crown, throne fragments and regalia rescued from the Rova fire of November 1995, plus Ranavalona III's exile portraits.
Built on the cliff edge where Ranavalona I had Christian converts thrown to their deaths in March 1849. The name means 'the place of hurling'; a stained-glass panel inside depicts the fourteen executed, and the rock face drops straight below.
A restored Anjohy villa holding 20,000 archive images from 1860 onward: Merina court portraits, the 1895 French conquest, colonial forced labour and the 1947 insurrection, with rotating themed exhibitions and archive film screenings.
The circular monument to the nationalist insurrection of 29 March 1947, crushed by French forces with tens of thousands of Malagasy deaths. Named victims are cut into the stone ring; the adjoining garden is a quiet vantage over Analakely.
Madagascar's first stone church, raised on the site of the prison where converts were chained under Ranavalona I. A small museum keeps the shackles, early Malagasy-language Bibles printed in 1835, and London Missionary Society ledgers.
The 1852 stone tomb of Prime Minister Rainiharo, the strongman behind Ranavalona I's anti-European policy, standing incongruously among Isoraka's colonial villas. His sons Rainivoninahitriniony and Rainilaiarivony lie alongside.
The university's collection in a 1920s villa: excavated Vazimba-era pottery, Arab-Swahili trade ceramics from the northwest coast, Mahafaly and Bara funerary sculpture, and instruments of the old royal court orchestra.
On the southern spur of the royal ridge, marking where Rasalama, the first Malagasy Christian martyr, was speared in August 1837. The 1899 memorial church holds her tomb, and the terrace looks west across the whole Betsimitatatra plain.