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Few capital cities open onto wilderness the way Nairobi does. The Nairobi National Park sits within the city's own boundaries, a fact that still surprises first-time visitors when they realise the skyline of the central business district is visible above the treeline while lions rest in the grass below. That proximity to the wild is not incidental to Nairobi's character; it is central to it, shaping how the city thinks about itself and how travellers tend to move through it.

The city grew rapidly from a railway depot established in 1899 during the construction of the Uganda Railway, and its colonial-era grid sits alongside newer districts that have expanded outward in every direction. The area around Westlands and the Gigiri neighbourhood, home to the United Nations offices in Africa, gives the city an international texture that sits alongside older quarters like the River Road area and the Asian-influenced architecture around Biashara Street. Karen, named after the Danish author Karen Blixen who farmed here in the early twentieth century, remains one of the most distinctive suburbs, leafy and spacious, with the Karen Blixen Museum drawing visitors who know the landscape from her writing.