Welcome to Cape Town, the legislative capital of South Africa and the seat of its Parliament. It is the country's oldest city, set on the shore of Table Bay, with a long Atlantic coastline that reaches down to False Bay in the south. Cape Town is known for its harbour and for its natural setting in the Cape Floristic Region, and Table Mountain National Park lies within the city boundaries. Its City Bowl, home to the central business district, is the oldest urban area in the Western Cape. Let us explore the mountain, the island, the cape and the colourful streets of this remarkable city.
Table Mountain
Photo: Danie van der Merwe from Cape Town, South Africa · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsLook up at the flat-topped giant overlooking the city: this is Table Mountain. Its Khoekhoe name means sea-emerging. Its top rises about 1,000 metres above the surrounding city, and visitors reach it either by cableway or on foot, a serious hike up steep and rocky paths. The mountain is home to 2,285 plant species, around 80 percent of them fynbos, an Afrikaans word meaning fine bush. These lands were once inhabited by Khoe-speaking clans, among them the people known as the High Clan.
Robben Island
Photo: South African Tourism from South Africa · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia CommonsOut in Table Bay lies Robben Island, whose name comes from an old Dutch word for seals. It is flat, only a few metres above sea level, and about 3.3 kilometres long. From the late 17th century until 1996 the island was used as a prison, and in the late 20th century it held political prisoners who opposed apartheid. Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment here. He later received the Nobel Peace Prize and in 1994 became South Africa's first black president.
Cape of Good Hope
Photo: Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsHere at the rocky headland of the Cape of Good Hope, on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, let us clear up a common misconception. This is not the southern tip of Africa; that is Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometres to the east-southeast. Yet for ships following the African coast from the equator, this is where the course begins to turn more eastward than southward. When the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias rounded it in 1487, he named it the Cape of Storms.
V&A Waterfront
Photo: Daniel Case · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia CommonsWelcome to the V&A Waterfront, built on the site of the oldest working harbour in the Southern Hemisphere. With Table Mountain as its backdrop, this 123-hectare neighbourhood combines apartments, a marina, large hotels and one of the city's largest shopping malls. By number of visitors, it is Cape Town's most popular tourist destination, drawing millions of people every year. The area is also a central part of the story of the very first settlement at the Cape.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
Photo: Discott · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsNestled at the eastern foot of Table Mountain lies Kirstenbosch. When it was founded in 1913 to preserve South Africa's native flora, it was the first botanical garden in the world devoted to this idea, at a time when invasive species were not yet seen as an ecological problem. Outdoors, the focus is on plants native to the Cape, with spectacular collections of proteas. Inside the large conservatory you can travel through savanna, fynbos and karoo landscapes.
Boulders Beach
Photo: Olga Ernst · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsWelcome to Boulders Beach in Simon's Town, a sheltered beach of little inlets between granite boulders, which gave it its name. The real stars here are the African penguins, an endemic and critically endangered species. In 1982 just two breeding pairs settled here, and the colony has since grown to about 3,000 birds. Even though the beach lies in a residential area, it is one of the few places where you can watch these penguins at close range, wandering freely.
Bo-Kaap
Photo: SkyPixels · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsStroll up the cobbled streets of the Bo-Kaap, whose name means above the Cape. On the slopes of Signal Hill above the city centre, this former Malay Quarter is a historical centre of Cape Malay culture, and its brightly coloured homes are famous. It was once a racially segregated area. The Nurul Islam Mosque here was established in 1844, and the neighbourhood holds the largest concentration of pre-1850 architecture in South Africa, making it the oldest surviving residential neighbourhood in Cape Town.
Castle of Good Hope
Photo: Bernard Gagnon · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsBefore you lies the Castle of Good Hope, a five-sided bastion fort surrounded by a canal. Built by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679, it is the oldest existing building in South Africa. It replaced an earlier fort of clay and timber built by Jan van Riebeeck after his arrival in 1652. Here is a curious detail: the castle once stood on the shoreline of Table Bay, but land reclamation has left it inland.
Lomakuume
