The two pavilions of Ocean Road Hospital, with their red minaret-style domes and white wooden verandahs, are the most distinctive German colonial buildings left in Tanzania. They were completed in 1897 and 1903 as the European hospital of Deutsch-Ostafrika, designed in a self-consciously "Moorish" style to ease the local population's anxiety about hospitals. The plan worked: the buildings became a city symbol almost immediately.
The hospital still functions, today as a national cancer institute, and casual visitors are not encouraged inside the wards. The exterior is the point. The best view is from Barack Obama Drive on the seaward side, with the Indian Ocean directly behind. Walk past at any hour; the domes turn red-gold in the late afternoon light.