Arusha
— — the city the safaris leave from.
Not only on a wall.
“The city under Mount Meru, in the highlands of northern Tanzania. Most travellers see it for a night before heading west to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro, or east to climb Kilimanjaro. Coffee from the volcanic slopes above town has gone to specialty roasters across Europe and Japan for decades. The clock tower at the city centre marks the halfway point between Cape Town and Cairo.
Arusha, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Arusha sits in northern Tanzania at roughly 1,400 metres, on the southern slopes of Mount Meru, an active stratovolcano that rises to 4,566 metres directly behind the city. Population is roughly 600,000. The city is the administrative seat of Arusha Region and the operational gateway to the northern safari circuit: Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and the Serengeti. Kilimanjaro climbs stage from Moshi, about 80 kilometres east. The clock tower at the city centre is marked locally as the midpoint of the road from Cape Town to Cairo, and the East African Community has its headquarters here.
Arusha sits high enough that nights stay cool through most of the calendar; daytime highs hold in the low to mid-20s°C even on the equator. Mount Meru, 4,566 metres, often clears in the early morning and gathers cloud by noon; Kilimanjaro, about 75 kilometres east, is visible from the higher ground above town on dry mornings between June and October. The long rains run March through May; the short rains fall in November. Most safari traffic moves in the dry windows of January to February and June to October.
Kilimanjaro International Airport, code JRO, lies about 50 kilometres east of Arusha and handles the regional safari and climbing traffic. The city holds the East African Community headquarters and was the seat of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 1995 to 2015. Day trips out of town reach Arusha National Park, which holds Mount Meru, the Momella lakes, and the Ngurdoto Crater. The Maasai market on Fire Road carries beadwork and textiles; the coffee tours on the Meru slopes are run by smallholder cooperatives that have been supplying European roasters since the 1930s.