Harare

Set at nearly 1,500 metres on Zimbabwe's central Highveld plateau, Harare earns its moniker as the Sunshine City through crisp highland air and avenues shaded by purple jacarandas, scarlet flamboyants and golden cassias. Beneath its quiet garden suburbs lies one of southern Africa's richest artistic movements: for more than six decades, sculptors working in opal stone, cobalt serpentine and black springstone have made the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and Chapungu Sculpture Park international touchstones for contemporary African sculpture.

Beyond the galleries, ancient granite formations rise directly out of the plateau at Epworth Balancing Rocks and the painted caves of Domboshava. Start with our first-timer briefing and sadza dining and Avondale craft markets.

Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport (HRE) lies 15 kilometres south-east of central Harare, receiving direct flights from Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, Lusaka, Nairobi, Dubai and Doha, alongside domestic links to Victoria Falls. Overland coaches and paved trunk highways also connect the capital with Lusaka, Bulawayo and Mutare. See how to get to Harare.

Most visitors prefer sleeping in the leafy northern suburbs of Avondale, Belgravia, Newlands, Highlands or Borrowdale rather than the downtown grid, trading post-office rush hours for jacaranda gardens, craft markets and evening bistros. We compare the main areas in where to stay in Harare.

Examine masterworks of Shona stone carving at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and Chapungu Sculpture Park, photograph the gravity-defying granite towers of Chiremba Balancing Rocks in Epworth and climb Domboshava at sunset, walk among giraffe and zebra in Mukuvisi Woodlands, and browse Avondale Flea Market. See the full list in things to do in Harare.

Zimbabwean meals revolve around sadza (thick white maize-meal or nutritious red finger-millet zviyo porridge) served with chargrilled beef or goat (nyama, often cooked at open-air gochi-gochi braai spots), rich peanut-butter greens (muboora or muriwo unedovi) and crispy dried kapenta fish from Lake Kariba. Read where to eat in our food and markets overview.

Founded as Fort Salisbury in 1890 and renamed Harare at independence in 1982 after the Shona chief Neharawa (whose people lived on the central granite Kopje), the capital is both the intellectual seat of Zimbabwe and the birthplace of the first-generation Shona sculpture movement championed in the 1950s and 1960s by Frank McEwen, Thomas Mukarobgwa, Nicholas Mukomberanwa and Joram Mariga.