The farmhouse
Veranda and period furniture.
Rod Waddington — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Daniel Case — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cweinandt — CC BY 4.0 · Cweinandt — CC BY 4.0
The farmhouse where the Danish writer Karen Blixen lived from 1917 to 1931 while running a coffee farm at the foot of the Ngong Hills, later the subject of her famous book Out of Africa, which became a film in 1985. The colonial-style house has a wide veranda and a sloping roof, and its rooms show furniture from her time, some of her belongings and photographs of farm life, with an account of her story and her ties with the local Kikuyu people. A large garden of old trees surrounds the house, with a view of the Ngong Hills she wrote about. The surrounding Karen suburb is now a leafy district with restaurants, cafés and gardens. The house became a museum in 1986, run by the National Museums of Kenya, and entry is USD 17 for foreign adults since May 2026. It is usually combined with the nearby Giraffe Centre and elephant orphanage.
Veranda and period furniture.
With Ngong Hills views.
The book and the film.
Karen suburb, at the foot of the Ngong Hills, south-west Nairobi
The house was the writer's farm, whose story she told in Out of Africa, filmed in 1985.