Where was Great Zimbabwe?

Great Zimbabwe is located in the southeastern highlands of the modern country of Zimbabwe — which took its name from the site when it gained independence in 1980. The ruins sit on a high granite plateau roughly 30 kilometers from the modern town of Masvingo, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, at an elevation of about 1,100 meters.

The location was strategically chosen. The plateau provided defensible terrain and a healthy climate (above the malarial lowlands), while the surrounding area offered good farmland and, crucially, access to the gold deposits of the Zimbabwe Plateau. The city's wealth derived primarily from its position as an intermediary in the gold trade between the mining regions of the interior and the Swahili coast ports — particularly Kilwa and Sofala — where gold was exchanged for imported luxury goods.

The site covers nearly 800 hectares and includes three main areas: the Hill Complex (built on a steep granite hill, likely a royal residence or ritual center), the Great Enclosure (an elliptical wall 250 meters in circumference, built of dry-stacked granite blocks reaching 11 meters high), and the Valley Ruins (a series of smaller enclosures that housed the general population).

Great Zimbabwe is the largest stone structure in sub-Saharan Africa outside of Egypt, and its discovery provoked a bitter controversy. European colonizers refused to believe that Africans could have built such sophisticated structures, attributing them variously to Phoenicians, Arabs, or the biblical Queen of Sheba. This racist denial has been thoroughly debunked by archaeological evidence, which conclusively establishes Great Zimbabwe as the product of the Shona-speaking peoples who inhabited the region.