In the first half of the 1900s most of the area on the southern slopes of Mount Meru was taken up by coffee plantations. The Lodge and Sanctuary date back to 1959, when Hungarian-born Dr Andreas Von Nagy, an alumnus of a wildlife management college in Germany, bought the property as a family home, quickly turning the grounds into an animal Sanctuary, which also served as a training facility for students. He set up the Mount Meru Wildlife Reserve (today, part of Arusha National Park) to help protect the fauna on Mount Meru and assisted the Tanzanian Government in establishing a Wildlife College. His home and passion attracted visitors from far and wide, rooms were added to accommodate his visitors, and the Mount Meru Game Lodge was born. 

The Lodge is one of the oldest in northern Tanzania. Our visitors over the years have included numerous presidents as well as members of European Royal families. When Dr Von Nagy retired in the 1980s, the animal orphanage came to an end. Today, the Mount Meru Game Lodge remains in family hands.

In late 2020, South African couple, Harry and Kim Bell, and their two children, travelled to northern Tanzania from Cape Town on a whirlwind 10-day holiday, visiting Tanga, the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tarangire National Park and none other than Mount Meru Game Lodge. So captivated were they by the people and the places they experienced in this breathtaking East African country, they decided to make Arusha, and the Lodge, their permanent home. Things fell into place in an extraordinary way, and by September of the following year, the family found themselves living in a cottage on the Lodge property, having invested in the business with the grandson and granddaughter of Dr von Nagy. 

Today, with their backgrounds in wealth management, journalism and events, the Bells are hands-on owners and custodians of this special property, who take great care to preserve the legacy of the decades gone by while pressing ahead with exciting and innovative plans for the future to help benefit their staff members, the wider community, and of course visitors from all over the world.