The Old Dispensary — locally Ithnashiri Dispensary — is the most ornate building on the seafront, a four-storey late-Victorian mansion of Indian-style carved wooden balconies, stained-glass windows and stucco. It was built between 1885 and 1894 by Tharia Topan, an Ismaili merchant who served as a financier to Sultan Barghash, and later served the Zanzibari community as a charitable clinic.
The building was abandoned and partly collapsed before the Aga Khan Trust for Culture restored it in the 1990s. It is now a small commercial centre with a few craft shops and a cafe on the ground floor, but the real reason to come is the building itself — the carved teak verandas, painted ceilings and ornamental tilework. Twenty minutes of looking is enough, but every step of it is worth taking.