Dr. Livingstone Memorial Museum

The Dr. Livingstone Memorial Museum in Ujiji, Kigoma, Tanzania, commemorates the 1871 meeting between Dr. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. It showcases artifacts related to Livingstone’s travels, local art, and the East African slave trade.

Planning your visit

"Dr Livingstone, I presume?" — the most famous greeting in the history of exploration was spoken at Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika near Kigoma, in November 1871. David Livingstone had been missing for years while searching for the source of the Nile; Henry Morton Stanley, sent by an American newspaper to find him, did. The memorial museum stands where the meeting is traditionally placed, marked by a mango tree grown from a cutting of the original.

The museum is modest — a small building with maps, documents, paintings depicting the meeting, and life-size figures of the two men — but the material on the East African slave trade gives it weight. Ujiji was a major slaving depot, the western terminus of the caravan route from Zanzibar, and Livingstone's accounts of what he witnessed there did more to shift British opinion against the trade than any campaign.

Kigoma is remote, on Tanzania's far western border, usually reached en route to Gombe Stream for the chimpanzees.

Bookable options are guided tours of the memorial site. Current availability is listed below.