Park · Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe
Khami Ruins
Torwa capital of the Butua kingdom from around 1450, 22 km west of Bulawayo: terraced stone platforms with the longest decorated wall in Zimbabwe, and a World Heritage Site since 1986.
Short answer
At Khami Ruins, international visitors pay US$10 (about €9 or £7.50) per adult and US$5 per child per visit. The rates apply from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026.
- Entry fee, international adult
- US$10 €9
- Malaria
- UK travel health advice rates Bulawayo as very low risk for malaria and recommends bite avoidance only, not tablets.
- Park fee nearby: Matobo National Park
- US$10 €9about 40 km away
- Where
- Matabeleland North, Zimbabwe20.16°S 28.38°E
Khami Ruins fees 2026
Checked National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe tariffValid 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026, per person per visit, in US dollars.
| Who | Adult | Child |
|---|---|---|
| International visitorsUS, Europe and everyone else | US$10 €9 | US$5 €4 |
| Zimbabwean residents | US$4 | US$1 |
- NMMZ sells Khami tickets as Local or Non-Resident only. There is no SADC rate at the monument, so a visitor from South Africa or Botswana pays the US$10 non-resident fee. The resident row is for people living in Zimbabwe.
- Children under five go in free with an adult. NMMZ does not say where the child rate stops, so check at the gate with older children.
- Khami falls under NMMZ's Western Region in Bulawayo, which also covers the Matobo Hills and has the Natural History Museum under it. World's View (Rhodes' grave) in the Matobo Hills carries the same NMMZ fee as Khami, US$10 for a non-resident adult and US$5 for a child, US$4 and US$1 for residents. The museum itself does have a SADC rate (US$7 adult, US$5 child); the two monuments do not.
- Fees are set in US dollars. Bring US$ cash in small notes; Khami is 22 km west of Bulawayo with nothing much around it. Zimbabwe's local currency since 8 April 2024 is the ZiG (Zimbabwe Gold), but foreign currency stays legal tender (the multi-currency system was extended to 31 December 2030) and US dollars are what the gate quotes.
- NMMZ's site gives 8 am to 4:30 pm daily for its museums and monuments. Its regional museums page and the Natural History Museum's own page say 9 am to 5 pm. Plan on being through the gate by mid afternoon.
- The small site museum at the entrance is included in the ticket, according to The Zimbabwe Guide.
- ZimParks raised its park fees in February 2026 after VAT was applied to tourism services. I found no matching NMMZ rise: the Khami prices in NMMZ's ticket shop were unchanged on 18 October 2026.
- NMMZ gives no start or end date for these fees. I show them as valid to 31 December 2026 and will re-check them then.
- Fees are set by National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe. Official tariff · Seen a new rate? Tell us
€1 = US$1.12 · £1 = US$1.34 (ECB rate, 3 Nov 2026). Converted amounts are approximate; you pay in US dollars.
How we got these figures
- The figures come from NMMZ's own online ticket shop, which sells one product, Monument and Site Entrance Fee, with a price for every combination of site, age group and Local or Non-Resident. The page only shows the US$0 to US$15 range; the per-ticket prices are in the shop's public product data, which I read for the four Khami lines (Local adult US$4, Non-Resident adult US$10, Local child US$1, Non-Resident child US$5). The product was last edited on 11 May 2026.
- The Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, which sits under NMMZ's Western Region, prints the same four figures on its own fees page under Khami and Worlds View. The page is undated (copyright 2021), so it counts as the second source but not as proof of the current date.
- The validFrom date is the start of this calendar year, not a date NMMZ gives.
- The Zimbabwe Guide (thezimbabweguide.com) says roughly US$5 for an international adult and US$2 for a child as of 2026, with no source given. NMMZ's shop says US$10 and US$5, so I went with NMMZ.
- I did not use Visit Zimbabwe or the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority for the fees. The ZTA Khami page I tried returned not found.
- NMMZ online ticket shop, Monument and Site Entrance Fee (per-ticket prices in the shop's product data; page last edited 11 May 2026) · official · checked 18 Oct 2026
- Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe (under NMMZ Western Region), Entrance Fees, Khami and Worlds View (undated, copyright 2021) · official · checked 18 Oct 2026
- NMMZ, Visit page (opening hours and the US$0 to US$15 fee range) · official · checked 18 Oct 2026
- NMMZ, Regional Museums (children under five free, 9 am to 5 pm opening hours) · official · checked 18 Oct 2026
- The Zimbabwe Guide, Khami Ruins Bulawayo (gives a lower fee, see research; site museum included in the ticket) · one source · checked 18 Oct 2026
- Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, home page (NMMZ Western Region covers Khami and the Matobo Hills) · official · checked 18 Oct 2026
- ATTA, ZimParks lifts Victoria Falls entry fees as VAT takes effect (13 February 2026) · one source · checked 18 Oct 2026
- Wikipedia, Khami (22 km west of Bulawayo) · one source · checked 18 Oct 2026
- Wikipedia, Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG from 8 April 2024; multi-currency system extended to 2030) · one source · checked 18 Oct 2026
Khami is the stone city people miss. It was the capital of the Butua kingdom under the Torwa dynasty for about two centuries from around 1450, taking over as Great Zimbabwe faded, and it has been a World Heritage Site since 1986. Instead of free-standing walls the builders terraced the hills along the Khami River into platforms faced with decorated stone, the longest decorated wall 68 m. It is 22 km west of Bulawayo, and you may well have it to yourself.
Getting there
Leave Bulawayo on 13th Avenue past the railway station, keep straight over Siye Pambile Drive, and about 20 km out turn right onto a dirt road. At the school take the right-hand track for roughly 2 km to the site museum, half an hour by car. There is no useful public transport, so it is your own wheels, a taxi (agree the fare first) or a half-day trip with a Bulawayo operator such as UTC Zimbabwe or Thebe River Safaris. The self-drive guide covers roadblocks and tolls.
When to go
Bulawayo sits at 1,358 m and winter is the best of it. May to August is dry, and June and July are the coolest months with a daily mean under 14 °C. October is the hottest month, with maximums around 29 °C. The rains run from November to April, mostly as brief afternoon thunderstorms.
What to do
Start in the small site museum by the gate, 20 to 30 minutes on the trade goods and soapstone dug up here. Then follow the fence and bear left at the game board for the Main Platform, the Hill Complex, where the king lived: round house remains on top and the best views of the area. The Cross Platform has a granite cross laid out in loose blocks, its origin still debated. Carry on along the river past the dam wall to the Precipice Platform, whose retaining wall runs 68 m at 6 m high with a chequer pattern the whole way, the longest decorated wall of its kind in the country. No mortar anywhere; the chequer, herringbone and cord patterns were for show, not defence. Allow two to three hours.
Good to know
Butua sold gold and ivory into the Indian Ocean trade and took glass beads, porcelain and silver in return. Changamire Dombo’s Rozvi took the kingdom around 1683 and ruled from Danamombe instead.
Nothing is sold on site, so bring water and food for the picnic area. Bulawayo is rated very low risk for malaria, but stay out of the river and the dam: bilharzia is a risk in fresh water anywhere in Zimbabwe. Carry US dollar cash in small notes and do not count on a card working. Matobo is less than an hour’s drive from Bulawayo. If you have seen Great Zimbabwe, Khami is the city that came after it, and the local stone was unsuited to free-standing walls, which is why the walls here hold up terraces instead.
History and culture
Khami is what came after Great Zimbabwe. When that city emptied in the 1400s, the Torwa kings built a new capital here on the Khami River, 22 km west of today's Bulawayo, and ran the gold-trading Butua kingdom from it for about two centuries. The builders had a harder granite to work with, so instead of tall free-standing walls they raised terraced platforms with decorated faces, and that difference is the reason to come. It has been a World Heritage Site since 1986.
- About 650 to 1075
The early farming village of Leopard's Kopje lies 2 km north-east of the ruins, a site so important that archaeologists named a whole Iron Age culture after it. Its people grew finger millet, sorghum, beans and cowpeas, kept cattle in byres whose edges are still marked by blocks of hardened dung, and from about the 10th century their herds grew, probably on the back of a developing gold trade. source
- About 1450
Early in the 1400s traders from Angoche on the Mozambique coast opened a route up the Zambezi that bypassed [Great Zimbabwe](/zimbabwe/great-zimbabwe/) and reached the goldfields to its west. Close to the goldfields, a local chiefdom centred on Khami rose to prominence, helped pull Great Zimbabwe down, and became the Butua kingdom under the Torwa dynasty. The first mambo (king) was Madabhale, praise-named Chibundule, the sounding of the war horn. Torwa may simply mean stranger or foreigner, and nobody is sure whether it was the dynasty's own name. source
- 1502
The Arab navigator Ahmad ibn Majid wrote down Munhu Butua, the king of Butua, in 1502, the first time the kingdom appears in writing. The Portuguese who followed called it the Mother of Gold. Butua was never a vassal of the Mutapa state to the north-east, whatever a 1520 Portuguese report claimed (it may have been made up to talk up Portuguese dealings with Mutapa). The two royal houses intermarried, the Torwa fought Mutapa until at least 1512, and in 1493 the mambo had sent the Mutapa king a gift of gold and reportedly 4,000 cattle. source
- 1573 to 1619
The mambo's residence on the Hill Ruin, a hill the builders enlarged with alluvial soil held back by retaining walls, gave up the goods that date Khami's best years: Ming porcelain from the reign of the Wan-Li emperor (1573 to 1619), Portuguese imitations of 17th-century Chinese porcelain, 17th-century Spanish silverware and 16th-century stoneware from the Rhineland. Radiocarbon dates put the city's growth between about 1450 and 1650. source
- 1644 to 1683
A civil war broke the Torwa. In the 1640s the mambo's brother, backed by the Mwenye (Shona-speaking Muslim traders), drove him into exile in Manyika in the east. He came back in 1644 with soldiers lent by a Portuguese prazo holder, one of the settlers who held land grants along the Zambezi; the prazo holder was killed on his way back to Manyika and his men withdrew. The Hill Complex was probably destroyed in that fighting, and the palace shows signs of fire. Drought then undid the last mambo, who was expected to bring rain and could not, and around 1683 Changamire Dombo, who may have started as head of the Mutapa king's royal herd, led his Rozvi followers into Butua and took it. Dombo ruled from Danamombe near [Gweru](/zimbabwe/gweru/) and by his death in 1696 held all of Butua. Some of the Kalanga, the Lilima, moved off into north-eastern Botswana. source
- 1830s
In the 1830s one group after another arrived from the south, fleeing the Mfecane, the military campaigns that tore through South Africa in those years. The Ndebele absorbed the local people, a new way of life took over, the craft of building in dry stone was lost, and the old stone settlements were left to decay. source
- 1893
Khami was lucky in one respect. It was protected as a royal reserve until the death of King Lobengula in 1893, and so the treasure hunters of the Rhodesia Ancient Ruins Company, who prospected stone ruins across the country, never seriously disturbed it. That is a large part of why it still had so much archaeology left when it was nominated for the World Heritage List. source
- 1928 to 1986
A dam was built on the Khami River just upstream of the ruins in 1928 and 1929, and the site runs for more than 2 km downstream of it, from the Passage Ruin to the North Ruin. David Randall-MacIver and Gertrude Caton-Thompson both explored Khami in the 20th century, and K R Robinson's excavations, published by Cambridge in 1959, gave the site its history. ICOMOS recommended it for the World Heritage List in April 1986 and UNESCO inscribed it that year. source
- Kalanga
- The people who built Khami were Kalanga, the western branch of the Shona, and TjiKalanga is still spoken by roughly 700,000 people in south-western Zimbabwe, mostly in Bulilima, Mangwe and Tsholotsho districts west and north-west of Bulawayo, with another 850,000 speakers over the border in Botswana. Zimbabwe's 2013 constitution recognises it as an official language and it is taught in schools where its speakers are the majority. Nambya is a close relative. source
- Ndebele Bulawayo
- The city next door is Ndebele country. Mzilikazi's people put their kraal here around 1840, Lobengula ruled from it until his town was burned in the First Matabele War of 1893, and on 4 November that year Leander Starr Jameson declared Bulawayo a settlement under the British South Africa Company. The 2022 census counted 665,952 people in Bulawayo, which is a province as well as a city. Lobengula himself took a Kalanga wife. source
- Gukurahundi
- From 3 January 1983 until the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987 the army's Fifth Brigade, trained by North Korean instructors and answering to the Prime Minister's office, killed civilians across Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South and parts of the Midlands. The victims were mainly Ndebele and Kalanga people suspected of supporting Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace documented at least 2,000 to 2,750 deaths and said the real figure could reach 8,000; most scholars put it at 20,000 or more. In Bulawayo, Ndebele men of fighting age were treated as dissidents, and many of those detained were executed or sent to camps. The Unity Accord ended the killing but brought no truth-telling, accountability or reparations. The government began village-level hearings in July 2024. source
- Rain and the ancestors
- Butua's religion ran through the dead rather than straight to the high god Mwali. Ordinary people most likely honoured their own ancestors (vadzimu), while the king's royal lion spirits (mhondoro), probably voiced by mediums or reached by diviners throwing dice, were thought to sway Mwali to send rain. Rainmaking was one of the duties of the mambo's Great Diviner. Oral tradition puts five of the king's residences in and around the Matobo Hills, and one historian thinks the last Torwa king's failure to bring rain is what changed the religion afterwards. source
- Still a shrine
- The museum that looks after Khami says plainly that it stopped being a political centre centuries ago but is still an important spiritual site. People come here for reasons that have nothing to do with tourism, so treat the platforms as somebody's church rather than a climbing frame. source
For German visitors: Among the imports excavated from the king's residence on the Hill Ruin was 16th-century stoneware from the Rhineland, lying with Ming porcelain and Spanish silver. A pot fired in Germany ended its days in a Kalanga king's house a long way from any sea, which says something about how far the Indian Ocean trade reached. source
For American visitors: Thomas Huffman, born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1944 and trained at the University of Denver and the University of Illinois, wrote his doctorate on the Leopard's Kopje group, the farming culture named after the village site beside Khami, joined Rhodesia's Historical Monuments Commission as Inspector of Monuments in 1970, and went on to head archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. In 2011 he co-wrote a paper on Khami and the Venda. He died in Johannesburg in 2022. source
Main sights in Khami Ruins
8- Main Platform (the Hill Complex)
The king's residence, three stepped tiers with an imposing front facade at the main entrance and an open area in front that may have been the royal court. The top tier has the footings of at least seven round houses, one of them presumably the mambo's, and the best view on the site. Go up first, while it is cool.
Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe (NMMZ Western Region), Khami Ruins - Cross Platform
Probably home to somebody senior, a close adviser to the mambo and perhaps a relative. A stone cross lies on its summit, and nobody knows for sure who put it there; one idea is a victory marker for the Portuguese mercenaries who helped sack the Hill Complex in 1644. It was cemented in place in 1938, and visitors still leave offerings on it.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Khame (previously Khami) Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site - Precipice Platform
The largest platform, on a low ridge beside the river, with the chequer-patterned retaining wall that is the longest of its kind known in Zimbabwe. Follow the path along the Khami River and you soon see the dam wall.
Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe (NMMZ Western Region), Khami Ruins - Passage Platform
Two semicircular platforms side by side, reached by a narrow central passage, with the remains of a daga (clay) house, a grain bin foundation and an animal enclosure, so somebody's home. The Vlei Platform has two houses and two free-standing enclosures behind a decorated wall, and the large Monolith Platform is the one you see from the road in.
Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe (NMMZ Western Region), Khami Ruins - Site museum
Small, and the right place to start for background. It holds the animal-shaped pot from the excavations. The Passage Platform also has a tsoro board (the stone-and-seed counting game) carved into the rock, and there is a rock gong on the Precipice Platform.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Khame (previously Khami) Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site - Khami River walk
Near the site museum a path follows the river under the trees, with shade and birds, and the Precipice Platform looks over the Khame Waterworks Dam. There is a big picnic area but nothing sold to eat, so bring lunch. The paths are well kept but there are a lot of steps, and half a day is about right.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Khame (previously Khami) Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site - Leopard's Kopje
The older village 2 km north-east of the ruins, about 150 by 200 yards of ground among small hills and ravines. There is nothing to climb; it matters for what came out of it, the seeds and the blocks of cattle dung from the old byres that let Keith Robinson in 1961 and Thomas Huffman in 1969 trace the valley's farmers back to the 7th century.
Wikipedia, Leopard's Kopje - Natural History Museum, Bulawayo
Many of the things dug out of Khami are on show at the Natural History Museum in [Bulawayo](/zimbabwe/bulawayo/). Worth seeing before or after the ruins rather than instead of them.
Zimbabwe Field Guide, Khame (previously Khami) Ruins, a UNESCO World Heritage Cultural Site
Did you know?
- The retaining wall of the Precipice Platform is about 68 m long and 6 m high and carries a chequerboard pattern along its whole length. There is no mortar in it or anywhere else at Khami; the blocks are hammered granite laid dry. source
- The builders got their stone by peeling exfoliating sheets off the granite outcrops, heating the rock with fire and cooling it fast to speed that up, then knocking the pieces into standard small bricks with cobble hammers. The neat faces you see are a skin over a fill of rough rock and rubble, and mopane posts found in the passages show some of them were roofed. source
- Kalanga tradition says the Torwa line ended with a haircut. Changamire Dombo married Chibundule's daughter (or sister, depending on who tells it), she cut the braid that carried the king's power, and Chibundule fled to the Matombo a Bhuba mountains and was never seen again. source
- Excavators pulled at least twelve iron and eight bronze spearheads, two carved ivory lions and five ivory divining dice out of a passage beside the king's quarters, along with imported porcelain and a pot shaped like an animal that the mambo probably used to ask his ancestors for guidance. Most of Khami's estimated 7,000 people lived below the platforms, in hundreds of house compounds across the open valley where the site museum stands now. source
- The Zimbabwe government could have nominated Danamombe (Dhlo-Dhlo) or Naletale, both singled out by ICOMOS for the quality of their architecture; Peter Garlake's 1970 survey listed about fifty stone sites between the Zambezi and the Limpopo comparable to Great Zimbabwe. It chose Khami, and ICOMOS said it rightly did, pointing to how little the site had been disturbed and how much archaeology it still held. source
- Between 2000 and 2007 volunteers from the French association C.H.A.M. worked alongside National Museums and Monuments staff to record and stabilise the walls, and the terrace walls of the Main, Cross and North platforms have since been restored. source
Checked 19 October 2026.
Wildlife you might see
3- likelyRiverine and woodland birdsThe path from the site museum along the banks of the Khami River, where the thick riverine bush gives the only real shade and the Zimbabwe Field Guide rates the birding as excellent. All yearsource
- possibleChacma baboonAround the car park. One visitor found a troop staring at the car as it parked, unimpressed. All yearsource
- rareKudu and small mammalsThe station manager told The Chronicle in February 2022 that the 108 ha site once had a fair variety of small mammals, kudu among them, but many have been lost to poachers since thieves took the perimeter fence and cattle started straying in. Treat any antelope sighting as lucksource
Likelihood is for a normal visit of two or three days, from the sources linked. Nothing is guaranteed in the wild.
Hikes and walks
2- Main Platform (Hill Complex) climb
From the site museum bear left at the game board, walk along the fence and follow the path to the decorated tiers of the main platform, which mark the front of the royal residence. Go up the main passageway (there is a small alcove on the right that may have been for guards) to the top, where at least seven circular houses stood, one of them the Mambo's, and the views are the best on the site. The Cross Platform, with its cross of loose granite blocks, is on the left of the path to the main passageway.
Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, Khami Ruins (platform by platform route) - River path to the Precipice and Passage platforms
From the museum head east across the open picnic ground (the Vlei Platform is right behind the public toilets), then follow the path along the Khami River banks past the old dam wall. From the wall a narrow path leads to the Precipice Platform, the largest stone platform on the site, whose long chequer-decorated wall is the longest of its kind known in Zimbabwe. Keep on the same path and you come suddenly on the Passage Platform, two half-moon platforms joined by a narrow central passage. The Monolith Platform is the one you can see from the road on the way in.
Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, Khami Ruins (platform by platform route)
Staying safe in Khami Ruins
- Malaria
- UK travel health advice rates Bulawayo as very low risk for malaria and recommends bite avoidance only, not tablets. Below 1,200 m NaTHNaC rates Zimbabwe high risk from November to June, so if the same trip goes on to lower ground, ask a travel clinic about tablets before you fly. Repellent on the river path towards dusk costs nothing. source
- The river and the dam
- Stay out of the Khami River and the water behind the old dam wall. NaTHNaC lists schistosomiasis (bilharzia) as a risk in Zimbabwe, and it is picked up from fresh water. Look from the wall, then move on. source
- Steps and edges
- The paths are well kept but the site is built up a hillside in stepped terraces, and there are a lot of steps; the Zimbabwe Field Guide says you need a reasonable level of fitness. On the main platform some steps lead out into mid-air, so keep children in hand near the terrace edges and wear shoes with grip. source
- Baboons and rabies
- Keep food packed until you sit down, do not feed the baboons and do not try to touch any animal. NaTHNaC says rabies is a risk in Zimbabwe and has been reported in domestic animals, so any bite or scratch means washing the wound well and getting to a doctor fast. It also reported falsified rabies vaccine in the country in January 2025, so insist on a registered product. source
- Finding the turn-off
- The Chronicle reported in February 2022 that road signs to the ruins are poor enough for visitors to get lost and end up at the Khami Prison Complex instead. Have the route loaded on your phone before you leave Bulawayo. source
- Roadblocks and driving on from Khami
- If Khami is one stop on a self-drive, stop at police roadblocks and toll gates when signalled, carry a copy of your passport photo page and visa, and get a receipt for any fine. The FCDO rates driving standards as very poor, with deep potholes and vehicles running without lights, says ambulances are unreliable, and advises against driving outside the main towns at night. Be back in Bulawayo before dark. source
Tips from travellers
- There is no cafe at the ruins, so bring your own water and lunch. The picnic area has concrete tables and benches under big shade trees, next to the car park. one source
- Look for the zoomorphic pot in the site museum, found in what is thought to be the Mambo's audience chamber, but most of the artefacts from Khami are in the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo. For the full story the Zimbabwe Field Guide points to the booklet Khami, Capital of the Torwa State by Rob Burrett and Paul Hubbard (Khami Press, 2013). one source
- Public holidays are busy. On Christmas Day 2024 The Herald found the picnic areas full of Bulawayo families with hampers and children playing on the grass. one source
- Ask a ranger to walk you round the main enclosures. They do it for a tip and will point out the chequer pattern (some call it herringbone) on the walls of the Hill Complex. Toilets are at the entrance. one source
- Do not expect silence on the hilltop or a smooth road in. In June 2025 Bulawayo's mayor told the full council that you need almost a four-wheel drive to reach the site, and that from the King's Enclosure all you hear is a quarry working right on the boundary. After rain, ask in town about the road before you go. one source
- Pay the gate, the ranger and your taxi in US dollar cash, in small notes. The FCDO says bank cards are not always accepted, international card withdrawals do not always work, change is rarely available and torn notes get refused. Sort the cash in Bulawayo before you leave town. official
Checked 19 October 2026. Conditions change, so confirm with the park or venue before you go.
Khami: the king's hill that burned, and the quarry next door
Somebody, probably in 1644, pulled the roof down over one of the passages on the king’s hill at Khami, packed the space with brushwood and set it alight. The south-east wind did the rest. You can still see the result if you know where to look: wall stones split and cracked by heat, and in a half-buried chamber that archaeologists call the sunken house, roof timbers turned to charcoal on a ledge, lying beside decorated pots and a beaker that most likely held beer. The mambo’s palace on the Hill Ruin did not simply fall to age. It seems to have burned in a family feud over the throne, in which the deposed mambo fought back with the help of a Portuguese mercenary from Mozambique.
A palace built on river mud
The hill itself is partly artificial. The builders used alluvial soil to level each terrace and held it in with retaining walls, unbonded and laid without a scrap of cement, every block balanced on the ones below. Next to the bonded walls of Great Zimbabwe that is a fragile way to build, and it gives conservators sleepless nights. Rain soaks the fill, the ground creeps, and the walls crack, bulge and sometimes come down. The repairs here are done by anastylosis, which means putting the original stones back where they fell and adding nothing new.
The slope below the king’s quarters, running down towards the river, is where broken things were thrown off the hill, and digging there has turned up broken pottery and glass, iron tools, small bits of ivory and gold. Down at the Precipice Platform the great chequered wall has three gaps in it that look like they were forced, perhaps by the same raiders. Wikipedia gives that wall as 68 m long; the Zimbabwe Field Guide, working from Rob Burrett and Paul Hubbard’s booklet, puts it at 75 m. Both it and the museum that runs the site call it the longest wall of its kind in the country.
Spared by a dead king’s law
The treasure hunters of the Rhodesia Ancient Ruins Company did their rampant prospecting elsewhere. Khami got off lightly because it was a royal reserve until Lobengula died in 1893, and ICOMOS credits that status with keeping the prospectors from doing it serious damage. Serious archaeologists came instead: David Randall-MacIver, then Gertrude Caton-Thompson, who had been invited out by the British Academy in 1928 and went home convinced that African builders made Great Zimbabwe, a view that earned her a file of hate mail she labelled “insane”. K. R. Robinson’s work, published by Cambridge in 1959, is the basis of most of what is known about the site. In between, in 1928 and 1929, a dam went across the Khami River upstream of the ruins, and in 1937 the site became National Monument No. 6.
The cross on the little hill north of the palace is the one puzzle nobody has settled. ICOMOS, writing in 1986, took it as a sign that Portuguese merchants or even missionaries reached Khami. The museum that runs the site calls it the Dominican Cross. Yet the Portuguese chronicles never mention being here, and another reading has it as a victory mark, showing where the Portuguese mercenaries had been. It was cemented down in 1938.
The quarry, the fence and the road
The protection that Lobengula gave Khami has worn thin. In March 2021 the Sunday News found Zada Construction setting up a granite quarry less than a kilometre from the ruins, on city council land, with no environmental impact assessment, and National Museums and Monuments had received no report on it. Police at the ruins said the blasting could be heard vibrating at the monuments. Villagers from Ward 16 gathered at the mine demanding answers, and Bulawayo’s Minister of State, Judith Ncube, ordered the work stopped. Four years later the mayor, David Coltart, told his council that from the King’s Enclosure, looking north, all you hear is a quarry working right on the boundary. Whatever the investigation found, the noise was still there in 2025.
By 2022 thieves had taken the perimeter fence. Cattle and other animals stray in among the dry-stone walls of the 108 ha site, and some people collect firewood to sell in the nearby suburbs. The Chronicle reported that nobody could say whether the road out belongs to the transport ministry, the city council or Umguza Rural District Council, which goes some way to explaining why Coltart said you almost need a four-wheel drive.
Who actually comes
Not many foreigners. The station manager put the pre-Covid figure at around 10,000 visitors a year, and in 2021 the site had 4,700, every one of them local. The Zimbabwe Field Guide calls it perhaps the least known of the country’s five World Heritage sites. One family who drove out from Bulawayo wrote of passing Nkulumane, a sewage works and an abandoned boarding school, then walking an aloe-lined path on a sunny August afternoon with the whole site to themselves and baboons staring at them, bored. They found the dam ill-kept and polluted, and the city’s effluent is discharged into the Khami River.
Christmas is the exception. On Christmas Day 2024 The Herald found the picnic areas lively with families unpacking hampers, children on the grass and people climbing the terraces for the view, one Bulawayo resident who had brought her family calling it “like stepping back in time while celebrating the present”. If you want the hill quiet, pick an ordinary weekday.
Quick answers
How much is the entry fee for Khami Ruins?
International visitors pay US$10 (about €9 or £7.50) per adult and US$5 per child per visit. These rates apply from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026 and are set by National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ).
Do Zimbabwens and SADC citizens pay less at Khami Ruins?
Zimbabwean residents pay US$4 per adult per visit. You need ID or a passport to get the lower rate.
When were these Khami Ruins fees last checked?
We last checked them on 18 October 2026 against 9 published sources. We re-check every two weeks, but always confirm with National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ) before you travel.
What animals can you see in Khami Ruins?
You have a good chance of seeing riverine and woodland birds. Kudu and small mammals are there but rarely seen.
What are the best hikes in Khami Ruins?
Main Platform (Hill Complex) climb and River path to the Precipice and Passage platforms. See the hikes section for times, difficulty and permits.
Khami Ruins and the parks nearest it
| Park | International adult | Distance | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khami Ruins | US$10 €9 | · | Matabeleland North |
| Matobo National Park | US$10 €9 | 40 km | Matabeleland South |
| Antelope Park | US$5 €4 | 157 km | Midlands |
| Hwange National Park | US$12 €11 | 203 km | Matabeleland North |
Where the Khami Ruins fees come from
- NMMZ online ticket shop, Monument and Site Entrance Fee (per-ticket prices in the shop's product data; page last edited 11 May 2026)
- Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe (under NMMZ Western Region), Entrance Fees, Khami and Worlds View (undated, copyright 2021)
- NMMZ, Visit page (opening hours and the US$0 to US$15 fee range)
- NMMZ, Regional Museums (children under five free, 9 am to 5 pm opening hours)
- The Zimbabwe Guide, Khami Ruins Bulawayo (gives a lower fee, see research; site museum included in the ticket)
- Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, home page (NMMZ Western Region covers Khami and the Matobo Hills)
- ATTA, ZimParks lifts Victoria Falls entry fees as VAT takes effect (13 February 2026)
- Wikipedia, Khami (22 km west of Bulawayo)
- Wikipedia, Zimbabwe Gold (ZiG from 8 April 2024; multi-currency system extended to 2030)
Open data: all park fees (CSV) · JSON (CC BY 4.0)
Cite as: Travel Africa Guide, "Khami Ruins fees 2026", checked 18 October 2026, https://travelafrica.guide/zimbabwe/khami-ruins/