Karen Blixen Museum

The Karen Blixen Museum is the former farmhouse of Danish author Karen Blixen, set in the leafy Nairobi suburb that now bears her name, about 10 km from the city centre. Run by the National Museums of Kenya, it looks out over the Ngong Hills that she wrote about in her memoir Out of Africa.

The house was built in 1912 by Swedish engineer Ake Sjogren and bought in 1917 by Karen and her husband, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, as the centre of a 6,000-acre farm, part of it planted with coffee. Karen ran the farm until 1931, when she returned to Denmark. Denmark later gave the house to Kenya as an independence gift, and it opened as a museum in 1986, soon after the Oscar-winning film Out of Africa was shot here.

Visitors tour rooms furnished with many of Karen's original pieces, then stroll the gardens and a nature trail with labelled trees, tree hyraxes and plenty of birdlife. Details are on the National Museums of Kenya website.