Ask at reception when you arrive and we will book a guide for you.
Main Entrance
Start at the main entrance, under the gable that has marked the front of the hotel since it opened in 1923.
Lobby
The lobby holds the vintage furniture, photographs and artefacts that trace the hotel back to its founding by the Uganda Railway.
The Gardens
Six and a half acres of gardens, with room blocks set among trees planted close to a century ago.
The Hemingway Bar
Named for Ernest Hemingway, who spent the night here in January 1954 after two plane crashes near Murchison Falls and at Butiaba. His room still carries his name.
Kabalega Restaurant
Named for Omukama Kabalega of Bunyoro, and doubling as a gallery for artefacts from the Bunyoro-Kitara kingdom.
Historical Significance
The rooms are named for the guests who slept in them — Hemingway among them, and the African Queen block for Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, who stayed here while filming in 1951.
Gift Shop
Carvings, textiles and craft work made in Uganda, much of it from the same collection that runs through the rooms of the hotel.
Courtyard
A life-size chess board, a pool table, table tennis and darts, under the timber roof between the bar and the dining room.
Departure
The tour ends where the hotel's own history meets Bunyoro's — a hundred years of the road west, told from one veranda.
Related reading: The African Queen in Uganda