Tabora Railway Station
The 1912 station at the junction of the Central Line, where trains divide for Kigoma, Mwanza and Mpanda.
The Central Railway from Dar es Salaam reached Tabora in 1912 and Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika in February 1914, replacing the caravan road that had made Tabora rich. The station, with its clock and gabled front, dates from that first line. The British built the branch to Mwanza on Lake Victoria between 1923 and 1928, and Tabora became the junction it still is: trains for Dar es Salaam, Kigoma, Mwanza and Mpanda all pass through.
A new standard-gauge railway (SGR) is being built alongside the old one. The Dar es Salaam–Mwanza line passes through Tabora, and construction of the Tabora–Kigoma section began in July 2026 for completion in 2030. The old station will then be a monument; for now it is still a working one, and the forecourt in the evening, with its bicycles and tea sellers, is Tabora at its most itself.
See Getting there for train services.
In this section
Livingstone's Tembe
The flat-roofed Arab trader's house at Kwihara where David Livingstone lived in 1871 and Henry Morton Stanley waited out a war.
The German Boma
The fort from which Germany ran central German East Africa, and the prize the Belgians took in 1916.
Tabora Hotel (the Kaiserhof)
Built in German times as a guesthouse fit for the Kaiser, and still a hotel today.
Gongoni Mosque and the old Swahili quarter
The Friday mosque at the centre of the oldest part of town, among the Arab houses, carved doors and mango trees the coastal traders left behind.