Museums in Kenya

The Karen Blixen Museum is the farmhouse below the Ngong Hills where the Danish writer lived from 1917 to 1931, about ten kilometres out from central Nairobi and kept much as she left it, with its own garden and outbuildings. Of the museums in this country it is the one that turns on a single life rather than a national collection, and the suburb around it took her name.

The Nairobi National Museum opened in 1929 and is the flagship of the national network, covering Kenyan art, ethnography and the hominid fossil record from around Lake Turkana, with a botanical garden and a snake park on the same grounds. It frames what the smaller museums here show in detail, so it is worth doing before Hyrax Hill or Nyeri rather than after.

You cannot leave the city without visiting this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Designed by an Italian architect, Fort Jesus has become a major tourist attraction. It may not be in the best condition, but the ruins give it an aura of mystery and majesty. It houses a museum with a couple of exhibits as well as Omani House, which displays the jewellery of the Omanis and tells you about how they lived.

The Nairobi Railway Museum opened in 1971 beside the main station and keeps the locomotives, carriages and records of the line the British built from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, the railway Nairobi grew up to serve. Rolling stock stands out in the yard, including the carriage from which Superintendent Ryall was taken by a lion at Kima in 1900. It is the one collection here you walk around outdoors.

The Nairobi Gallery occupies the old Provincial Commissioner's office on Kenyatta Avenue, a 1913 building long nicknamed Hatches, Matches and Dispatches for the births, marriages and deaths registered there. It holds the Murumbi collection of African art and ornament, and Point Zero, the marker from which distances in Kenya were measured, stands outside. It is the most central museum on this list.

The Kenya National Archives occupies a former bank building on Moi Avenue in central Nairobi. Its ground floor is a gallery rather than a reading room, hung with paintings, textiles, weapons and stamps from the same Murumbi collection shown at the Nairobi Gallery on this list, while the records themselves are upstairs for researchers. It is small enough to take twenty minutes, the quickest stop here.

Uhuru Gardens on Langata Road is where the British flag came down and the Kenyan flag first went up in December 1963, and it is the country's largest commemorative park, declared a national monument in 1966. Monuments to independence stand in the grounds, and a museum of Kenyan history has since been built on the site. It is the only entry here that is a memorial ground rather than a collection.

Hyrax Hill Museum in Nakuru, Kenya, showcases artifacts and remnants from the Neolithic period, offering a glimpse into early human life in the region. The museum provides valuable insights into Nakuru's archaeological heritage and the ancient roots of human civilization in Kenya.

Nyeri Museum, now a national monument since 2001, used to be a 'Native law court' built in 1924. It was created to handle traditional law cases, initially managed by village elders. As the number of cases grew, a second hall was added, with the first court handling civil cases and the second handling criminal matters.