The town contains the Lamu Fort on the seafront, constructed under Fumo Madi ibn Abi Bakr, the Sultan of Pate, and was completed after his death in the early 1820s.

A few days later the rest of the fleet arrived forcing the king of the town to quickly concede to pay an annual tribute to them with 600 Meticals immediately.

For a considerable time, Portugal had a monopoly on shipping along the East African coast and imposed export taxes on pre-existing local channels of commerce.

Woman writers such as the poet Mwana Kupona – famed for her Advice on the Wifely Duty – had a higher status in Lamu than was the convention in Kenya at the time.

[7] In fear of future attacks, Lamu appealed to the Omanis for a Busaidi garrison to operate at the new fort and help protect the area from Mazrui rebels along the Kenyan coast.

Kenya gained political independence in 1963, although the influence of the Kenyan central government has remained low, and Lamu continues to enjoy some degree of local autonomy.

[11] While the terror group Al Shabaab kidnappings had placed Lamu off-limits in September 2011, by early 2012 the island was considered safe.

[15] Other traditional exports included ivory, mangrove, turtle shells and rhinoceros horn, which were shipped via the Indian Ocean to the Middle East and India.

In addition to the abolition of slavery, construction of the Uganda Railroad in 1901 (which started from the competing port of Mombasa) significantly hampered Lamu's economy.

[16] Harambee Avenue is noted for its cuisine, and has a range of stores, Coconut, mango and grapefruit and seafood such as crab and lobster are common ingredients.

[20] The Lamu Port at Manda Bay, the cornerstone of the LAPSSET project,[21] was first proposed in 1975, but only initiated in 2009 under President Mwai Kibaki.

[22]  When international funding for the project was sought, the Chinese government seized the opportunity to make LAPSSET part of their String of Pearls geopolitical strategy.

Fumo Madi ibn Abi Bakr, the sultan of Pate, started to build the fort on the seafront, to protect members of his unpopular government.

Habib Salih, a Sharif from Comoros Island with family connections to the Hadramaut, Yemen, settled on Lamu in the 1880s, and became a highly respected religious teacher.

[27] The Lamu Cultural Festival, a colourful carnival, [28] is usually held in the last week of August, which since 2000 has featured traditional dancing, crafts including kofia embroidery, and dhow races.

[30] Lamu Old Town was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2001, based on 3 criteria: In 2011, proposals were being advanced to build a deep-water port which would have much greater capacity in terms of depth of water, number of berths, and ability for vessels to arrive and depart at the same time than the country's main port at Mombasa.

Several airlines serves the area including, Air Kenya, Safari Link and Fly 540 — there are daily flights to Malindi, Mombasa and Nairobi.

Part of the events in the novel Our Wild Sex in Malindi (Chapters 14 and 15) by Andrei Gusev takes place in Lamu and on the neighboring Manda Island.