16 Best Sights in Cape Town City Centre, Cape Town

Originally named Heerengracht after a canal that once ran the length of the avenue, this street has always been Cape Town's principal thoroughfare. Although there are a couple of historical buildings dating to the early 1900s, and the beautiful Adderley Street Flower Market—one of the city's oldest markets, located in Trafalgar Place between Strand and Darling streets—has hung on, Adderley Street in recent years has become mostly a commercial hub for office buildings and franchise stores. The sidewalks are packed with street vendors selling everything from fruits and vegetables to cell phone covers and tea towels, serving people going to and from work. This is the place to experience the busy hustle and bustle of everyday Cape Town. 

In the center of Cape Town's downtown business district, above the commerce of St. George's Mall, Camelot Spa sparkles with crystal light fixtures, an urban oasis in taupe and champagne, complete with wallpaper on the ceilings. The upscale experience begins at check-in, when you get a Body Composition Analysis. There are couples rooms, a flotation pool, and a relaxation area, not to mention a wide range of body therapies and massages on offer.

Despite its name, the castle isn't the fairy-tale fantasy type but rather a squat fortress that hunkers down as if to avoid shellfire. Built between 1665 and 1676 by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to replace an earthen fort constructed in 1652 by Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutch commander who settled Cape Town, it's the oldest building in the country. Its pentagonal plan, with a diamond-shaped bastion at each corner, is typical of the Old Netherlands defense system adopted in the early 17th century. The design was intended to allow covering fire for every portion of the castle. As an added protection, the whole fortification was surrounded by a moat, and back in the day, the sea nearly washed up against its walls. The castle served as both the VOC headquarters and the official governor's residence and still houses the regional headquarters of the National Defence Force. Despite the bellicose origins of the castle, no shot has ever been fired from its ramparts, except ceremonially.

You can wander around on your own or join one of the highly informative guided tours at no extra cost. 

Church Square bore witness to much of Cape Town's dark history. An inconspicuous concrete plaque along Spin Street's median is all that's left of the Slave Tree, an enormous Canadian pine under which slaves were reportedly auctioned off. A section of the tree is on display at the District Six Museum.

The center of Cape Town's art and antiques business, this pleasant block of Church Street is a pedestrian mall filled with art galleries, antiques dealers, small cafés, and a few excellent boutiques. Among the art galleries worth visiting are AVA (35 Church St.), World Art (54 Church St.), and The Cape Gallery (60 Church St.). A daily antiques and flea market is also held here.

Note that Church Street is (somewhat confusingly) not located directly off of Church Square and Groote Kerk (the church for which the street is named), but across Adderley Street.

From a balcony in this building overlooking Darling Street, Nelson Mandela gave the historic speech upon his release from prison in 1990. This Edwardian building constructed in 1905 is gradually being spruced up and is still a commanding presence overlooking the Grand Parade. What was the seat of local administration is now home to the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra (the acoustics in the main hall are phenomenal) and a traffic department. Some of the building's stone was imported from Bath, England, and the clock is a scaled-down replica of Big Ben.

One of Cape Town’s best-kept secrets is also a great place to seek relief from a sweltering summer day if the beach is packed. These lush, landscaped gardens are all that remain of a 43-acre tract laid out by Jan van Riebeeck in April 1652 to supply fresh vegetables to ships on their way to the Dutch East Indies. By 1700 free burghers (Dutch-speaking colonists no longer indebted to the Dutch East India Company) were cultivating plenty of crops on their own land, and in time the VOC vegetable patch was transformed into a botanic garden. It remains a delightful haven in the city center, graced by fountains, exotic trees, rose gardens, and a pleasant outdoor café. At the bottom of the gardens, close to Government Avenue, look for an old well that used to provide water for the town's residents and the garden. The old water pump, engraved with the maker's name and the date 1842, has been overtaken by an oak tree and now juts out of the tree's trunk some 6 feet above the ground. A huge statue of the colonist Cecil Rhodes, and Cape's prime minister in the late 19th century, looms over the path that runs through the center of the gardens. He points to the north, and an inscription reads, "your hinterland is there," a reference to Rhodes's dream of extending the British Empire from the Cape to Cairo. A self-guided walking brochure (R20) with detailed historical information about the gardens and nearby sights is sold at the shop next door to the small but informative visitors center, which are both by the restaurant.

Housed in the Buitenkant Methodist Church, this small museum preserves the memory of one of Cape Town's most vibrant multicultural neighborhoods and of the district's destruction in one of the cruelest acts of the apartheid-era Nationalist government. District Six was proclaimed a white area in 1966, and existing residents were evicted from their homes, which were razed to make way for a white suburb. The people were forced to resettle in bleak outlying areas on the Cape Flats, and by the 1970s all the buildings here, except churches and mosques, had been demolished. Huge controversy accompanied the proposed redevelopment of the area, and only a small housing component, Zonnebloem, and the campus of the Cape Technicon have been built, leaving much of the ground still bare—a grim reminder of the past. The museum consists of street signs, photographs, life stories of the people who lived there, and a huge map, where former residents can identify the sites of their homes and record their names. This map is being used to help sort out land claims. You can arrange in advance for a two-hour walking tour of the district with a former resident for a nominal fee. 

Once a military parade ground, this old public square is now a parking lot where traders (many informal) sell things like sweets, cheap sunglasses, and fish-and-chips—with a statue of Edward VII serving as a parking attendant and seagull resting post. It was here that more than 100,000 of Nelson Mandela's supporters gathered on February 11, 1990, when, after 27 years in prison, he addressed an adoring crowd from the balcony at City Hall.

For more than a century this cobbled square served as a forum for public announcements, including the 1834 declaration abolishing slavery, which was read from the balcony of the Old Town House, overlooking the square. In the 19th century the square became a vegetable market as well as a popular watering hole, and you can still enjoy a drink at an open-air restaurant or hotel veranda while watching the crowds go by. Today the square has been re-cobbled, and the outdoor market sells predominantly African crafts from around the continent. It is also flanked by some of the best examples of art-deco architecture in South Africa.

Across from the slave tree on Church Square's eastern end is the entrance to the Gothic-style Groote Kerk. One of South Africa's most famous churches, the Groote Kerk (Large Church) was built in 1841 on the site of an earlier Dutch Reformed church dating from 1704. The adjoining clock tower is all that remains of that earlier building. Among the building's interesting features are the enclosed pews, each with its own door—prominent families would buy these so they wouldn't have to pray with the masses. The enormous pulpit is the joint work of famous sculptor Anton Anreith and carpenter Jan Jacob Graaff. The lions supporting it are carved from local stinkwood; the upper portion is Burmese teak. The organ, with nearly 6,000 pipes, is the largest in the Southern Hemisphere; visitors are welcome to listen to it when it is played, most Sundays between 9:30 and 10. At least 200 people are buried beneath the Batavian soapstone floor, including eight governors. There are free guided tours on request during the week from 10 to 2.

Built in 1679 by the Dutch East India Company to house the enslaved people they'd brought to the Cape for labor, it also housed the supreme court from 1815 to 1914. The lodge now holds a museum with a fascinating and sobering account of slavery in the Cape, as well as excellent and evocative temporary exhibits that generally examine more contemporary views on apartheid and human rights. The somewhat randomly curated upper galleries house exhibits and artifacts from the various groups populating the Cape, as well as ceramics and an Egyptology collection.

The section of Long between Orange and Strand streets is lined with magnificently restored Georgian and Victorian buildings. Wrought-iron balconies and fancy curlicues on these colorful houses evoke the French Quarter in New Orleans. Today antique dealers, backpackers' lodges, the Pan-African Market, funky clothing outlets, and a plethora of cafes, bars, and restaurants make this one of the best browsing streets in the city; by night, it can live up to some of its older reputation—a place for debauchery. At the mountain end is the Long Street Baths, an indoor swimming pool, and an old Turkish hammam (steam bath).

This stunning cathedral was once the religious seat of one of the most recognizable faces—and voices—in the fight against apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. In his position as the first Black archbishop of Cape Town (he was elected in 1986), he vociferously denounced apartheid and relentlessly pressed for a democratic government. It was from these steps that he led a demonstration of more than 30,000 people and coined the phrase the Rainbow People to describe South Africans in all their glorious diversity. The cathedral continues in its active monitoring role today, holding marches and the new government to account. The Anglican cathedral was designed by Sir Herbert Baker in the Gothic Revival style; construction began in 1901, using sandstone from Table Mountain. The structure contains the largest stained-glass window in the country, some beautiful examples of late-Victorian stained glass, and a 1,000-year-old Coptic cross. If you want to hear the magnificent organ, go to the choral evensong at 6 on Sunday evening.

This pedestrian-only promenade stretches about five blocks from St. George's Cathedral through the city center (passing Greenmarket Square) to the financial district. Shops and cafés line the mall, and street vendors sell everything from T-shirts to African arts and crafts. Street performers and dancers gather daily to entertain crowds of locals and visitors, who rub shoulders on their way to and from work or while sightseeing. The very good "Earthfair" food market is held on the Cathedral end of the mall every Thursday from 11 to 3.

Amid the dozens of great joints around Long and Loop streets, Zorina's is a hole-in-the-wall that's famous for great Cape Malay curries and samosas.