Moroni
Comoros · 3 sights · guided virtual tour, about 2 min
Welcome to Moroni, the largest city and capital of the Union of the Comoros, an island nation in the Indian Ocean. Its name means at the river. Moroni lies on Ngazidja, the largest of the country's three main islands, and it has a port and several mosques. When the town was first settled is not known, but by the middle of the second millennium Moroni was a well-established town, trading across the Indian Ocean. The Badjanani Mosque, built in 1427, is a testament to that wealth. Let's begin our tour.
Sights
Mount Karthala
Photo: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsTowering over Grande Comore is Mount Karthala, an active shield volcano and the highest point of the Comoros at 2,361 metres. It has erupted more than 20 times since the 19th century, and those eruptions have shaped a summit caldera measuring 3 by 4 kilometres. During an eruption in April 2005, 2,000 residents were evacuated. Here is a striking detail: a crater lake that formed after the 1991 eruption once dominated the caldera, but after 2005 it was gone completely, replaced by rough, dark grey rock.
National Museum of the Comoros
Photo: David Stanley from Nanaimo, Canada · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsHere in Moroni you will find the National Museum of the Comoros, which presents the country's cultural heritage. Established in 1989, it has four exhibition rooms covering history, art, archaeology and religion, volcanology and earth science, oceanography and natural science, and social and cultural anthropology. The museum is part of the national centre for documentation and scientific research, and two smaller regional museums on the islands of Anjouan and Mohéli are associated with it.
St. Theresa of the Child Jesus Church
Photo: TamSpUS · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsBefore you stands the Church of Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus, the main Catholic church in this largely Islamic island group. It follows the Latin rite and falls under the Vicariate of the Comoros Islands. The church is named after Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, a French Discalced Carmelite nun declared a saint in 1925 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1997 by Pope John Paul the Second. The archipelago's other two Catholic churches are in neighbouring Mayotte.
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