Things to Do in National Museum of Tanzania

Hall of Man exhibit

The Paranthropus boisei skull keeps watch over a room of early-human casts, fluorescent lights buzzing faintly as you circle glass cases holding stone tools that still bear thumb-grooves. You smell the faint metallic tang of fossilized bone while reading yellowed cards that explain Laetoli footprints in careful cursive.

Tingatinga painting gallery

Electric blues and acid greens leap off masonite boards, paint so thick it catches overhead light in tiny ridges. Local artists' interpretations of hyenas, market scenes and dhow sails fill a side gallery where the guard might hum along to Bongo Flava leaking from his phone.

Colonial carriage collection

Rusty Land Rovers and a governor's Bentley sit in an outdoor shed, leather seats crackeded by coastal humidity and smelling faintly of petrol and mouse droppings. You run fingers along bullet holes in a 1950s police truck while reading how these vehicles ferried British administrators between gin-tonic appointments.

Traditional music display

Press worn brass buttons to trigger recordings of ngoma drums and zeze fiddles, sound tinny through decades-old speakers. You can handle reproduction instruments, wood smooth from countless tourist palms, while listening to crackling field recordings that smell faintly of speaker dust.

Museum courtyard café

Under a frangipani tree, plastic tables wobble on uneven pavers while you sip bitter coffee from tin cups and nibble sesame Kashata brittle. The chalkboard menu offers chipsi mayai omelette whose eggs taste faintly of wood smoke from the outdoor burner, all while pigeons coo from corrugated roof ridges.

Upanga - leafy embassy quarter, 10-minute walk to museum gates

Oyster Bay - upscale peninsula with breezy guesthouses and Italian cafés

Msasani Peninsula - resort hotels on ocean cliffs, taxi ride away

Kariakoo - frantic market district, budget hostels above spice shops

City Centre - colonial-era hotels near ferry port, convenient but noisy

Mwenge - craft-market area, mid-range B&Bs in walled gardens