Art and Culture
The entrance fees for many of Cape Town's museums are waived on about eight "commemorative days" throughout the year. The following museums are free on those days:
The South African National Gallery boasts an impressive collection of British artwork and is concentrating on beefing up its South African selections, which already include authoritative collections of beadwork and indigenous sculpture. Across the Company's Gardens (a colonial vegetable garden turned public park, today worth a stroll for its leafy elegance) is the South African Museum, which features more than one-and-a-half million artifacts in the natural and human sciences. Check out the exhibit on the indigenous peoples of southern Africa.
Centrally located in Greenmarket Square, Koopmans-De Wet House, a restored neo-classical Cape Town house, is decorated as it would have been in the 18th century with Cape furniture, Chinese and Japanese ceramics, paintings, glass, and silverware. Drop in for a quick rest after you're worn out from haggling at the market, and see what life was like for upper-class Cape residents in the 18th century.
The Bo-Kaap Museum focuses on the legacy of Islam on the Cape, featuring Islamic decorative art and outlining the history of Bo-Kaap, the Muslim neighborhood perched directly above the central business district. Make a stop at the museum before taking a walk through the streets of the neighborhood, located on the slopes of Signal Hill. Many of the area's residents are descendants of the slaves brought to the Cape by the Dutch during the 16th and 17th centuries, and the area retains its strong "Cape Malay" culture. The houses, mosques, and shops are painted in a whimsical array of pinks, yellows, oranges, and greens. The small area is home to nine mosques, including the Auwal Mosque, the oldest in South Africa, which is located directly behind the museum.
In the southern suburb of Constantia (about eight miles from the city center) is Groot Constantia, the oldest wine-producing estate in the country, located in the famed Constantia Valley. A tour through the Manor House, fitted with period furniture, paintings, textiles, ceramics, brass, and copper, gives visitors a peek at how a wealthy Cape farming family would have lived in the late 18th and early 19th century. Visitors can also tour the coach house and the wine cellar, where wine storage and drinking vessels from antiquity to the early 20th century are on display.
The Slave Lodge attempts to confront the legacy of slavery in South Africa and pay homage to the estimated 63,000 African and Asian slaves who were brought to the city between the mid-17th century and the early 19th century. Erected in 1679 as a windowless brick building to house the slaves of the Dutch East India Company, today the lodge features exhibits focusing on the slave history of South Africa, slave family roots, and the peopling of South Africa. Ask a curator to show you the highlights, and don't miss the exhibit addressing the Jim Crow South.
Entrance to many of Cape Town's museums is free or by voluntary donation only. Those museums are listed below:
The Cape Town Holocaust Centre, which serves as a memorial to the six million Jews killed during the Holocaust. The museum intends to teach the consequences of racial discrimination, and draws parallels between the Holocaust and the injustices of apartheid. The local survivors' testimony and portrait gallery are worth a look.
The Old Town House, also in Greenmarket Square, was built in 1755 as the city's first public building, serving as the Burgher Watch House, Senate, and City Hall before being converted to Cape Town's first art museum in 1914. It is home to the Michaelis Collection, one of the most significant collections of Dutch paintings outside of Europe and North America. Today this beautifully restored building can be rented out for swanky parties, or used as the backdrop for wedding photos.
Rust en Vreugd, a well-preserved 18th-century Cape Dutch mansion is worth a visit for its tranquil garden and collection of prints, drawings, and watercolors depicting scenes of life in early Cape Town.
On the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the Maritime Centre features an overview of shipping in Cape Town. The museum exhibits a collection of ship models, images of Table Bay's development over the last 300 years, and the earliest existing model of Table Bay harbor. (Entrance by donation.) Just off the waterfront in Green Point is the Cape Medical Museum, where visitors can see reconstructions of turn-of-the-20th-century doctors' offices, operating theaters, and hospital wards, and learn about early medicine in the Cape.
The Goodman Gallery and the Michael Stevenson Gallery, both in Woodstock, are some of South Africa's premier contemporary art galleries and house regularly rotating collections.
The Centre for the Book, located on the west side of the Company's Gardens, is a unit of the National Library of South Africa that was formed to make books more accessible to all people. It offers visitors the chance relax in reading rooms featuring works by contemporary South African authors. You can also browse through the collection of contemporary South African texts in the reading room or surf the Web at the Internet café.
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