Not very far from the pillar, there stands an Old Portuguese Chapel that was used the early days’ European explorers. As an effort to conserve National Heritage and Artifacts, The National Museums of Kenya built a museum, also known as the House of Columns just close to the pier.

Not far from the pier, stands the Old District Commissioner office, now turned into a Museum. Outside is the least known landmark of a sail – Prince Henry the Navigator monument, built as a sense of direction by sailors to India.

Much of the buildings around the old District commissioner’s office are very old and are preserved by the The National Museums of Kenya as national heritage.

Just opposite the office is Uhuru gardens (Umoja Taxi), serves as a small picnic garden and also a part of Malindi’s tourist attractions.

The use of oral histories in Africa is now very much in vogue among scholars for the purpose of dating migrations and the founding of towns. But with some of the old settlements on the east coast oral histories have tended to be grossly inaccurate.

The earliest historical reference to an East African “Malindi” is found in a Chinese geography called the Yu-yang-tsa-tsu published in 1060 but actually written by the Scholar Tuan Ch’eng-shih who died in AD 863.

The archaeological evidence found in Malindi, although rather incomplete, supports the contention that Malindi as a town was founded in the thirteenth century.

James Kirkman, who spent ten years excavating the Arab town of Gedi, sixteen kilometres south of Malindi, has found in Malindi yellow green-glazed ware called sgraffiato which was made in Persia or Iraq in the thirteen century or possibly at the end of the twelfth century.

This thirteenth -century date corresponds not only with the probable founding of Malindi but also with that of Lamu, Mombasa and Gedi.

Thus according to this historical and the most recent archaeological reports, Malindi was probably founded by Arabs in the early thirteenth century.[/