Ngorongoro Conservation Area
— — the volcano that collapsed into a world.
Not only on a wall.
“A vast collapsed caldera in northern Tanzania, about twenty kilometres across and six hundred metres deep, the largest unbroken volcanic crater on Earth. The crater floor holds around 25,000 large animals (lion, elephant, hyena, the last black rhino of the region) alongside Maasai pastoralists who graze cattle along the rim. Olduvai Gorge cuts the western edge, where the Leakeys uncovered hominid remains beginning in 1959. UNESCO listed the area in 1979.
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, 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.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area covers about 8,300 square kilometres in the Arusha Region of northern Tanzania, between the Serengeti plains and the wall of the Great Rift Valley. Its centrepiece is Ngorongoro Crater, a collapsed caldera roughly twenty kilometres across, six hundred metres deep, and 260 square kilometres in floor area, the largest unbroken volcanic caldera on Earth. The original volcano is thought to have collapsed two to three million years ago. UNESCO inscribed the area as a natural World Heritage Site in 1979 and added cultural criteria in 2010 for Olduvai.
The crater floor sits at about 1,800 metres, the rim at 2,200 to 2,400, with cool mornings and afternoon cloud building over the Crater Highlands. The floor holds an estimated 25,000 large animals, including lion, elephant, spotted hyena, wildebeest, and one of Tanzania's last viable populations of eastern black rhino. The Conservation Area is a multiple-use zone, the only one in Tanzania where Maasai pastoralists graze livestock alongside wildlife. About 87,000 Maasai live within the area today, mostly outside the crater itself.
The Conservation Area is reached from Arusha, about 180 kilometres east, by road through Karatu and the Lodoare Gate. Most visitors descend into the crater for a half-day game drive; the descent and ascent roads are one-way and managed by the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority. Entry fees and crater-service fees are paid per vehicle and per person. The dry season from June to October offers the clearest wildlife viewing; February calving season on the surrounding plains draws predators down from the rim.