Khami Ruins: Travel Guide to Zimbabwe’s Second Stone City

Khami Ruins: Travel Guide to Zimbabwe’s Second Stone City: History & Culture

Discover Khami Ruins: Travel Guide to Zimbabwe’s Second Stone City

Khami Ruins National Monument sits 22 km west of Bulawayo, the second-largest stone city in Zimbabwe after Great Zimbabwe itself, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986. Far fewer visitors make the short trip out from Bulawayo than travel to Great Zimbabwe near Masvingo, which makes Khami one of the country’s genuine hidden gems: the same dry-stone building tradition, decorated walls that Great Zimbabwe’s plainer terraces don’t have, and usually only a handful of other visitors.

Khami at a glance

• Country: Zimbabwe
• Province: Matabeleland North
• Nearest city: Bulawayo, about 22 km east
• Built: from around 1450, over roughly the next 200 years
• UNESCO status: World Heritage Site since 1986, under criteria iii and iv
• Main retaining wall: 6 m high, 68 m long

History

Khami became the capital of the Torwa dynasty’s Kingdom of Butua around 1450, after the decline of Great Zimbabwe, and remained the Torwa capital for about 200 years. Its builders adapted Great Zimbabwe’s 13th-century dry-stone traditions to Khami’s hillier, rockier site, arranging the city across seven elevated stone platforms. In 1683, the Rozvi leader Changamire Dombo conquered Khami and the city was abandoned by its original occupants; Ndebele raiders later moved through the area in the 1830s. UNESCO inscribed Khami Ruins National Monument in 1986, the same year as Great Zimbabwe.

What to see

Khami’s seven platforms carry decorated dry-stone retaining walls in patterns not found at Great Zimbabwe, including checkerboard, herringbone and cord designs built up without mortar. The main retaining wall reaches 6 m high and runs 68 m long. Because the site sees far fewer visitors than Great Zimbabwe, it’s possible to walk the platforms and walls in relative quiet, tracing the same building tradition a couple of hundred kilometres and a couple of centuries removed from its more famous predecessor.

Layout: the Hill Complex, Precipice and Cross platforms

Khami’s builders divided the city between a royal area on raised stone platforms and open valley ground where commoners lived. The Hill Complex is the largest of the seven platforms and is linked to the others by walled passages; it is thought to have been the royal enclosure, a three-tiered platform built up with intricate decoration. The Precipice platform carries the site’s most celebrated wall: a checkerboard-patterned retaining wall 6 m high and 68 m long, the longest decorated dry-stone wall of its kind found anywhere in the region, built as the focus of a ritual area rather than a defensive structure. A separate area known as the Cross Ruin, reached along the path to the Hill Complex’s main passageway, takes its name from a cross-shaped arrangement of loose granite blocks set into one of its smaller platforms.

The Khami River and Khami Dam

The ruins take their name from the Khami River, on which the colonial-era Khami Dam was built in 1928-1929 as one of Bulawayo’s early water sources; downstream from the dam, the monument sits on a hilltop about 1,300 m above sea level. The dam supplied the city until it was decommissioned in 1988 because of pollution, and today it lies just outside the monument boundary, a reminder that this same stretch of river has mattered to Bulawayo’s water supply twice, five centuries apart.

Preservation

Zimbabwe’s National Museums and Monuments authority began a dedicated conservation and recording programme at Khami in the early 2000s, focused on stabilising and restoring the dry-stone retaining walls that had weathered over five centuries. Work on the Main, Cross and North platforms has since stabilised sections of walling that were at risk of collapse, work that continues alongside the site’s role as a working archaeological monument rather than a fully reconstructed one.

Getting there

Khami is a short trip from Bulawayo, about 22 km to the west, and is usually visited as a half-day excursion combined with time in the city. Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport (BUQ) in Bulawayo is the nearest airport.

Where to stay

Khami is close enough to Bulawayo to visit on a day trip without needing to stay near the ruins themselves. In Bulawayo, Holiday Inn Bulawayo is rated 8.3/10 from 408 verified reviews on Booking.com; see our Holiday Inn Bulawayo page for the full write-up.