Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe is in Zimbabwe, a country in southern Africa.

Long ago, it was a big, busy city. Today you can walk among its stone walls. Some walls curve around in a giant ring.

Great Zimbabwe lies about 30 kilometers from the town of Masvingo, in Zimbabwe, at about 1,100 meters above sea level. It was built by the Shona, a Bantu people, between about 1100 and 1450.

The city covered nearly 80 hectares. Its ruins are in three groups: the Hill Ruins on a granite hill, the Great Enclosure below it with its huge curved wall, and the Valley Ruins. The Shona word Zimbabwe means "the house in stone" or "stone houses," and when the modern country became independent in 1980 it took the name Zimbabwe, the name of the old kingdom whose ruins these are.

The monument lies about 30 km from Masvingo, at some 1,100 m, and the protected property covers almost 800 ha; the ancient city itself extended over nearly 80 ha. UNESCO dates it to between 1100 and 1450 AD and divides it into the Hill Ruins, the Great Enclosure and the Valley Ruins.

UNESCO calls the ruins a unique testimony to the Bantu civilization of the Shona between the 11th and 15th centuries, and says the whole Zimbabwean nation identifies with the site and has adopted as its emblem the soapstone bird found there, which may have been a royal totem. UNESCO describes its construction method as unique in African architecture and "unquestionably of Bantu origin." It was inscribed in 1986.

The Great Enclosure is a giant ring of stone wall.

Inside is a tall stone tower shaped like a cone. Experts were not sure what it was for!

The Great Enclosure is shaped like an oval. Its outer wall of cut granite is about 7 meters high and about 5.5 meters thick at the bottom, and a pattern of zigzags, called chevrons, runs along the top. Inside, a narrow passage between two walls leads to a cone-shaped stone tower about 11 meters high. In 1985 experts reported that no one knew what the tower was for. A smaller cone-shaped tower stands nearby.

On the hill, archaeologists found six soapstone posts topped with carved birds. A bird like these is now the national emblem of Zimbabwe.

ICOMOS describes the Great Enclosure as an ellipse bounded by a wall of cut granite about 7 m high and 5.5 m thick at the base, topped by a frieze with two rows of chevrons; a second, inner wall was never completed. Between the two walls a narrow passage leads to a conical tower about 11 m high, whose purpose, ICOMOS wrote in 1985, was not known, with a smaller conical tower nearby.

The Hill Ruins are generally considered a royal city: the west enclosure is thought to have been the residence of successive chiefs, and the east enclosure, where six soapstone (steatite) posts topped with birds were found, is considered to have had a ritual purpose. The photo, taken from the hill according to its record, shows the oval wall of the Great Enclosure with trees inside and other stone walls beyond.

Today, Great Zimbabwe is a national monument.

Visitors walk the paths between the walls. Workers protect the stones and the plants around them.

Great Zimbabwe is a national monument looked after by Zimbabwe's National Museums and Monuments. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.

The land around the ruins matters too. Keeping the natural setting healthy helps protect the old walls and shows how the city fitted into its landscape. Workers try to control plants that do not belong there, such as a spreading shrub called lantana.

The property is managed by the National Museums and Monuments administration. UNESCO stresses that the natural environment of the Great Zimbabwe Estate matters for the survival of the remains and for understanding the link between buildings and setting; native wildlife has largely been lost to poaching, and the invasive shrub Lantana camara must be kept under control.

ICOMOS also recorded that a UNESCO mission in 1982 had noted damage where stone walls had collapsed from various causes. The site's soapstone bird appears as the emblem of the modern state.