Livingstone
— — the town the river built itself a doorway for.
Not only on a wall.
“A wide, low colonial-era town on the north bank of the Zambezi, about ten kilometres upriver from Mosi-oa-Tunya, the Smoke That Thunders. Livingstone was the capital of Northern Rhodesia from 1911 until Lusaka took the seat in 1935, and the older streets still carry the verandahs and pressed-tin awnings of that period. It is the Zambian side of Victoria Falls, the way most people enter the falls' world. Local Lozi and Tonga families have lived this stretch of the river for generations. In dry-season morning light the spray column from the falls is visible from town, a slow white pillar over the trees.
Livingstone, 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.
Livingstone is the principal town of Zambia's Southern Province, sitting at about 986 metres on the north bank of the Zambezi River, around 10 kilometres upstream from Victoria Falls. The town was founded in 1905 around the new railway bridge over the Zambezi gorge and named after the missionary-explorer David Livingstone, who reached the falls in 1855. From 1911 to 1935 it served as the capital of Northern Rhodesia. The 2022 census recorded a population near 177,000. The town is the Zambian gateway to the falls, and is paired with Victoria Falls town on the Zimbabwean side, connected by the historic bridge.
Mosi-oa-Tunya — the local name and the older one, the Smoke That Thunders — is the largest sheet of falling water in the world by combined width and height, with a curtain about 1,708 metres wide and 108 metres high. The Zambezi falls into a narrow basalt gorge cut along old fissures, and the spray column climbs hundreds of metres on a full river. The falls were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1989, jointly with Zimbabwe. Flow peaks in March and April after the upstream rains; by October and November the Zambian side may be a thin curtain across dark rock. Devil's Pool, on Livingstone Island at the lip, is reachable only in the low-water months.
Most visitors fly into Harry Mwanga Nkumbula International Airport (LVI), about 5 kilometres from the town centre, with direct services from Johannesburg, Nairobi, Addis Ababa and Lusaka. From town it is a short drive to the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park entrance and the Knife-Edge Bridge viewpoint. The Victoria Falls Bridge, opened in 1905, carries road, rail and a famous bungee jump across to Zimbabwe; both passports and visas (including the KAZA UNIVISA, when available) handle the crossing. The dry season from May to October brings clear viewing; the green season from December to April brings volume and a permanent rainbow but heavy spray over the Zambian side.