CChronica Maps

Great Zimbabwe: Then and Now

Capital of a Shona kingdom built in dry stone between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries; its Great Enclosure is the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara.

As it was
Great Zimbabwe, as it was
Plate from The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892). The British Library, No restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
The ruins today
Great Zimbabwe, the ruins today
Andrew Moore from Johannesburg, South Africa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Key facts

Country todayZimbabwe
StatusRuins
Date1300
Location20.267° S, 30.934° E
Map showing Great Zimbabwe in 1300Great Zimbabwe
Border map for 1300. See the world in 1300.

Open Great Zimbabwe in the interactive map

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Who ruled this place

Derived from the border maps; each row runs until the next recorded border change.

PeriodState
500 BC–999Khoisan
1000–1491Great Zimbabwe
1492–1649Mwenemutapa
1650–1814Rozwi
1815–1913Unclaimed / no data
1914–1919Rhodesia
1920–1937Zimbabwe
1938–1944Southern Rhodesia
1945–1959Rhodesia
1960–todayZimbabwe

More: Historic landmarks of Zimbabwe · All landmarks

Further reading

Last updated 9 November 2026. Sources: border data from historical-basemaps, land and rivers from Natural Earth; texts written for Chronica Maps from standard reference works. How we make the maps.