Zimbabwe · Bulawayo Province
Where to Stay in Bulawayo, Bulawayo Province
Bulawayo is a city of Matabeleland in southwest Zimbabwe, the old royal town of the Ndebele kings, a place of wide streets, railways, and the granite hills of the Matobo nearby.
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Where to stay in Bulawayo
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
In Bulawayo it comes down to the broad city centre or the Matobo hills. The wide streets around the centre keep the museums, the market, and the old buildings within a walk, and staying downtown suits anyone here for the city. The broad avenues run straight and long.
Purple jacarandas line the roads. Out toward the Matobo and the veld, the town gives way to the granite hills, the game parks, and the ancient ruins of the bush. A room in the hills trades the streets for the balancing rocks, the rock paintings, and the wild kopjes of the Matobo.
The bushveld runs on for miles. Stay downtown for the city, or out for the Matobo. The wide streets and the kopjes frame the City of Kings.
About Bulawayo
Bulawayo is the City of Kings of Matabeleland.
What is Bulawayo known for?
On the high dry plateau of southwest Zimbabwe, it rose on the site of an Ndebele king's royal town, and it keeps the broad straight streets laid out for the ox-wagons, the great railway works and their museum, the fine natural-history museum of the country, and the granite hills and ancient stone ruins of the Matobo around. The dry bushveld runs flat and wide. Great granite kopjes rise from the plain.
What are the main landmarks in Bulawayo?
The Matobo Hills are the wonder of Bulawayo. The strange granite kopjes and balancing rocks south of the city, hung with the paintings of the ancient San and dotted with old shrines, spread across the bush, the emblem of the region, out of downtown. Old stone walls stand nearby.
The ruined stone city of Khami, raised by an old kingdom, lies west of the town, while the railway museum, the natural-history museum, and the wide colonial streets mark the country around Bulawayo.
What is the history of Bulawayo?
Bulawayo was the royal town of the Ndebele. The Ndebele king Lobengula held his capital here on the high veld, a great town of the cattle nation, until the British came in the eighteen-nineties and took the land in war. A new town rose on the ashes.
The settlers laid out a wide colonial town where the king's kraal had stood, with streets broad enough to turn a span of oxen, and called it Bulawayo still. The railway made the city grow. When the line came up from the south, Bulawayo became the great railway hub of the country, its workshops and yards spreading across the veld.
The old hills held ancient secrets. In the granite kopjes of the Matobo to the south stood the painted caves of the first people and the stone-walled ruins of Khami, and Bulawayo grew as the industrial city of Matabeleland, keeping its wide streets, its railways, and its museums. The kopjes still watch over the plain.
Bulawayo keeps its City of Kings on the high veld.
Where is Bulawayo?
Bulawayo lies in the southwest of Zimbabwe, on the high plateau of Matabeleland near the Matobo Hills. The city sits on flat dry grassland over four thousand feet up, in a land of thorn bush and open veld, with the granite kopjes of the Matobo rising to the south and the dry plains running west toward the Kalahari. The bushveld spreads flat and brown.
Granite hills break the plain.
What is the climate of Bulawayo?
Bulawayo has a warm, dry highland climate. Hot dry days and cool nights hold much of the year, with a short summer of rains and warm sun and long dry winters on the veld. The dry season browns the bush.
Summer storms green the plain.
How do you get to Bulawayo?
Bulawayo lies in southwest Zimbabwe, on the road and rail between Harare and the border. The line and the highway run to it across the veld from Harare and the south, and roads lead northwest to Hwange and the great falls. Trains cross the bushveld.
Harare lies northeast over the plateau.
Updated August 2026