City Sights
For all its wide highways and high-rise financial district, Cape Town hasn’t lost its colonial centre. Adderley Street is the city’s traditional artery, studded by fountains, palm trees and statues. Turn off it at Darling Street, past the pompous City Hall, for the pentagon-shaped, 17th-century Castle of Good Hope.
Parallel with Adderley Street, pedestrianised St George’s Mall has shopping and street theatre. In nearby Long Street, the character and the architecture changes from formal to raffish. Here are the fun restaurants, cafés and bars, the bookshops, junk shops and backpackers’ hostels in buildings with wrought iron balconies and Art Deco styles.
Visit Greenmarket Square for its busy open-air market, but don’t miss the Michaelis Collection in the Old Townhouse there. An even better example of a curved gabled, antiques-filled Cape Dutch townhouse is Koopmans de Wet House on Strand Street.
The Mother City’s parliament building – white, tree-shaded and decoratively Victorian – is seated in Government Avenue alongside the old Company’s Garden. At the top of this pleasant lung of exotic plants and leafy walks are the National Gallery of Art and the South African Museum, complete with Planetarium.
At the entrance to the Gardens, the neo-gothic St George’s Cathedral, designed by Sir Herbert Baker and now often referred to as ‘Archbishop Tutu’s church’, is a cool oasis of calm in the busy city.
The minarets of small mosques rise between flat-roofed, Arabic-style houses clinging to the steep streets of the Bo-Kaap area on the lower slopes of Signal Hill. Sizzling in orange, lime and purple paint – and softer shades of pink, cream and yellow – these Cape Malay houses reflect one of many periods in the history of this multi-cultural city. The little Bo-Kaap museum in Wale Street is well worth a visit.
Swooping freeways separate the city centre from the Waterfront, where the working harbour adds impact to Cape Town’s most popular attraction. With smart hotels, masses of restaurants and sun-steeped bars, live music, shops by the hundred, craft centres, an IMAX cinema and an excellent Aquarium, it’s where everyone gravitates to, local and tourist alike, by day and by night. Boats leave for sunset cruises, Table Bay vistas and Robben Island.
Useful links
Cape Town and Western Cape Tourist Office
Added 2008/08/05 @ 00:15:59
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