Cape Town Tour

Cape Town Tour

Walk through the Company Gardens and visit the Bo-Kaap Museum. The first Malays arrived in the Cape as political refugees and slaves during the 17th century. Nearly two centuries after emancipation these Islamic people moved into the area known today as the Bo-Kaap, building mosques with picturesque minarets and their own Georgian-style houses with Dutch influence. One of the oldest Cape Town buildings houses the museum, which is furnished as a Muslim house of the 19th century and documents the history of the Cape Malays. En route to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, stop at Diamond Works for a tour of the diamond cutting studio, a jewellery manufacturing workshop, a jewellery design studio as well as a gemological laboratory. Lunch at the V&A Waterfront, a development that has brought new life to the old harbour of the Dutch East India Company in Table Bay. The complex offers shops, craft markets, restaurants, taverns, cinemas, theatres as well as great views over the harbour. Drive through District Six, named the Sixth Municipal District of Cape Town in 1867. Originally established as a mixed community of freed slaves, merchants, artisans, labourers and immigrants, District Six was a vibrant centre with close links to the city and the port. By the beginning of the 20th century, however, the process of removals and marginalisation had begun. The first to be forced out were Black South Africans who were displaced from the District in 1901. As the more prosperous moved away to the suburbs, the area became a neglected ward of the city. On 11 February 1966 it was declared a White area under the Group Areas Act of 1950 and by 1982 the life of the community was over. More than 60 000 people were forcibly removed to barren outlying areas aptly known as the Cape Flats while bulldozers flattened their houses in District Six. The museum, established in December 1994, works with the memories of the District Six experience. Visit the Castle of Good Hope, the oldest surviving building in South Africa. This pentagonal fortification replaced a small clay and timber fort built by Commander Jan van Riebeeck in 1652 as a maritime replenishment station for the ships of the Dutch East India Company. The stone walls between the bastions are 150m long and 12m high. Read more >