The Anglican Cathedral of St John sits on a rise in central Dodoma, a modest stone church with a square tower that has been the seat of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika since 1927. The diocese was carved out of older missionary territory when the Church Missionary Society reorganised its work in the interior, and Dodoma was chosen because of its position on the new Central Railway.
The building is plain — undressed stone, a simple wooden roof, narrow windows — but the setting is pleasant and the grounds shaded by old trees. Services are held in both English and Swahili. The cathedral is also one of the few buildings in Dodoma that predates the city's promotion to capital in 1974, and it gives a sense of what the place looked like when it was still a sleepy railway town.