Bulawayo Province, Zimbabwe — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Bulawayo Province known for?

Bulawayo is an industrial city that reads as unhurried, and the streets laid out through its centre are broad enough to be the first thing most arrivals remark on. Several World Heritage sites sit within an hour's drive, along with national parks and monuments from the precolonial era, which gives the province a reach far larger than the ground it covers. Zimbabwe counts two cities that are also provinces, and Bulawayo is one of them.

Where is Bulawayo Province?

Bulawayo Province covers 546 square kilometres, which makes it a city with a province's title rather than a province with a city in it. The line is drawn tight. Zimbabwe has two such units, Bulawayo and the capital Harare, and in each the city and the province are the same thing, which means the province's geography is simply the geography of one built-up place.

The Matsheumhlope River threads across it. Around that small square of ground, Matabeleland opens out. Bulawayo is the largest city in that region, which gives the province a role out of proportion to the ground it holds, and the country beyond its edge carries the national parks and World Heritage sites reachable within an hour's drive.

The province sits south of the equator and inside the tropics, and the ground inside its boundary is city ground, drawn around a settlement rather than around a landscape. An hour's drive supplies the rest. What lies beyond the boundary is not the province's to administer, but it is very much the province's to reach, and the short drive out explains why so much of what draws visitors to Bulawayo stands outside Bulawayo.

What is Bulawayo Province like?

Bulawayo dates from 1840. Industry gave the city its working character, and the boulevards driven through the centre are wide in a way that speaks to planning rather than to accumulation. Two kinds of standing sit together here.

Bulawayo is the second city of Zimbabwe and the first city of Matabeleland, and those are not the same thing: one measures it against Harare, while the other makes it the centre of a region in its own right. The deeper record sits outside the city limits. Monuments from the precolonial era and several World Heritage sites lie within an hour's drive of Bulawayo, so the province's cultural weight is partly borrowed from ground it does not govern.

That arrangement is unusual. A province the size of a city cannot hold much inside itself, and Bulawayo's answer has been to work as the base from which Matabeleland's heritage is visited rather than as the place where it stands. National parks fall inside the same radius, which puts wildlife and monuments on the same day's itinerary from the same set of streets.

Visitors arriving for the parks and the monuments spend their nights among Bulawayo's boulevards, which ties the city's daily life to a stream of people passing through on their way somewhere else.

What is the history of Bulawayo Province?

Bulawayo was founded in 1840. The country around it was not empty of history when that happened, and several monuments from the precolonial era, recognised as World Heritage sites, stand within an hour's drive of the city. Industry followed the founding.

Bulawayo became an industrial centre and the largest city in Matabeleland, and Zimbabwe counts it as a province in its own right, a rank it shares only with the capital, Harare.

What is the climate of Bulawayo Province?

Matabeleland sets the terms, not the city. Bulawayo sits inside the tropics and south of the equator, which reverses the calendar against the northern hemisphere and puts the warm months at the turn of the year. The province is too small to have weather of its own.

Its 546 square kilometres take whatever the surrounding region delivers, and the difference between the centre's boulevards and the ground beyond the boundary is a matter of shade and paving rather than of climate.

How do you get to Bulawayo Province?

Everything about arriving here is short. The province measures 546 square kilometres, so once a traveller is inside Bulawayo the province has been crossed, and onward movement is a question of leaving rather than of getting about. Bulawayo is Zimbabwe's second city after Harare, and it is the largest city in Matabeleland, which makes it the natural point of arrival for the region.

The World Heritage sites and national parks that draw people to this corner of Matabeleland sit within an hour's drive, so most days here begin with a departure from the city and end with a return to it.