Pangani is a town in northeast Tanzania that lies 45 km south of Tanga, at the mouth of the Pangani River. It is the headquarters of Pangani District. Although archaeologists have found the remains of small 15th century settlements on the bluffs just north of Pangani, the modern town came to prominence in the nineteenth century, when, under nominal Zanzibari rule, it was a major terminus of caravan routes to the deep interior.

 From the 1860s onward townspeople established large plantations of sugar and coconut in Mauya, along the banks of the river just west of town. The plantations were worked by slave labor, and Pangani also became an important center of the slave trade, shipping captives taken in the wars attendant on the collapse of the Shambaa kingdom in the Usambara mountains to the plantations of Pemba and Zanzibar.

 Consisted of several historical sites in and around the town serve as reminders of the strong Arabic influence and the later German and British colonial era in Tanganyika. The district boma or headquarters is the most impressive building remaining from the period of Zanzibari rule.