The Catholic Mission at Bagamoyo, set in a coconut grove north of the old town, is the oldest Catholic mission station in East Africa. The Holy Ghost Fathers — a French missionary order — established it in 1868, when slavery was still legal on Zanzibar, and made the fight against the slave trade their central concern. They bought freedom for children arriving in the caravans and raised them at the mission school.
The mission museum, housed in a long single-storey building, is one of the best small museums in Tanzania. The collection covers the slave trade, the mission's history, the long fight to end the trade in the 1880s and 1890s, and the arrival of German colonisation. Many of the displays are personal objects donated by the families of freed slaves, with their stories alongside. Allow two hours. The mission church next door — the original 1872 chapel where Livingstone's body lay in state — is still in use.