Discover Cape Town
Three hundred and seventy years of history, standing at the foot of one mountain.
Cape Town is one of the oldest and most layered cities in the southern hemisphere — a Khoikhoi grazing ground, a Dutch East India Company refreshment station, a British colonial port, and the city where apartheid was both built and dismantled. Understanding that history is part of understanding what you're looking at when you stand on its streets today.
Best of Cape Town
Top 10 Best of Cape Town
The ten places most visitors ask about first — landmarks, beaches and heritage sites that between them cover what makes Cape Town one of the world's most rewarding cities to explore. Every one of these is available as part of a private, guided Cape Rhino tour.
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01
Table Mountain
The flat-topped landmark that defines the city's skyline, reached by rotating cableway or marked hiking trails, with panoramic views over the City Bowl, Robben Island and the Atlantic coastline.
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02
Robben Island
The former prison island that held Nelson Mandela for 18 years, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site reached by ferry from the V&A Waterfront.
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03
V&A Waterfront
A working harbour turned into the city's best-known shopping, dining and boat-cruise destination, and the departure point for Robben Island ferries.
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04
Boulders Beach
A sheltered beach near Simon's Town best known for its resident colony of African penguins, viewable from close-up boardwalks.
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05
Cape Point & Cape of Good Hope
The dramatic southern tip of the Cape Peninsula, reached via Chapman's Peak Drive, one of the most scenic coastal roads anywhere in the world.
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06
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
One of the great botanical gardens of the world, set against the eastern slopes of Table Mountain, with the Boomslang canopy walkway above the tree line.
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07
Bo-Kaap
A historic Cape Malay quarter of brightly painted 18th-century houses on a cobbled City Bowl hillside.
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08
Camps Bay
A palm-lined Atlantic Seaboard beach with coastal restaurants and sunset views backed by the Twelve Apostles mountain range.
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09
Cape Winelands
Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl — historic towns settled from the 1680s, known for Cape Dutch architecture and mountain scenery.
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10
District Six & the City Bowl
The District Six Museum, the Company's Garden and the Castle of Good Hope — Cape Town's colonial and apartheid-era core, walked or driven with context.
Heritage & origins
Before the city, and its first two centuries.
Long before any European ship rounded the Cape, the region was home to the Khoikhoi and San peoples, who grazed livestock and hunted across the Cape Peninsula for thousands of years. In 1652, the Dutch East India Company established a small refreshment station at the foot of Table Mountain under Jan van Riebeeck, intended only to resupply ships sailing between Europe and the East. That outpost grew into a permanent settlement, drawing Dutch, German and French Huguenot settlers, and — through the forced importation of enslaved people from West and East Africa, Madagascar and South and Southeast Asia — became one of the most diverse societies at the southern tip of the continent. Britain seized the Cape in 1795 and again in 1806, ruling it as a colony through the 19th century. Cape Town's Cape Dutch architecture, its Bo-Kaap quarter, and the Winelands towns of Stellenbosch, Paarl and Franschhoek all carry the physical trace of this layered founding.
A city shaped by apartheid
1948 to 1994: segregation, removal, and resistance.
In 1948, South Africa's National Party government formalised racial segregation into law under apartheid. The Group Areas Act of 1950 divided Cape Town by race, and in the years that followed entire communities were forcibly removed from land they had lived on for generations. District Six, a vibrant, mixed-race inner-city neighbourhood a short walk from the CBD, was declared a whites-only area in 1966; more than 60,000 residents were forcibly relocated to the Cape Flats, and most of the original neighbourhood was bulldozed. Robben Island, visible from Cape Town's harbour, held political prisoners — most famously Nelson Mandela, imprisoned there for 18 of his 27 years in custody. Cape Town was also a centre of resistance: from the Treason Trial to the United Democratic Front, Capetonians of all backgrounds took part in the decades-long struggle against apartheid. The system formally ended between 1990 and 1994, culminating in South Africa's first democratic election and Nelson Mandela's inauguration as president — with his first public address after release from prison delivered from the balcony of Cape Town City Hall.
Cape Town today & tomorrow
A post-apartheid city, still writing its next chapter.
Since 1994, Cape Town has grown into one of Africa's most visited cities and a hub for tourism, tech, film and finance, while continuing to work through the deep inequality apartheid left behind. The V&A Waterfront, once a working harbour, is now a global tourism and business landmark; the city's "Silicon Cape" tech sector has grown steadily; and heritage sites such as the District Six Museum and Robben Island draw visitors who want to understand the city's full story, not just its coastline. Cape Town's future is being shaped by its response to water scarcity and climate resilience after the 2018 "Day Zero" drought, by continued investment in townships and housing, and by a tourism economy that increasingly asks visitors to engage with history alongside natural beauty. For a first-time visitor, this context changes how the mountain, the harbour and the townships all read — not just as scenery, but as a city still in motion.
Touring Cape Town in detail
How to actually see the city, not just pass through it.
Cape Town rewards a slower, more structured visit. A City & Table Mountain tour typically covers the Company's Garden, the Castle of Good Hope, the Bo-Kaap, and time at the top of Table Mountain by cable car, weather permitting. A township tour, led respectfully and with local context, adds the post-apartheid chapter the coastline alone won't tell you. Further out, the Cape Peninsula drive via Chapman's Peak to Cape Point and the Boulders Beach penguin colony shows the meeting point of two oceans, while the Cape Winelands around Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Paarl reveal the 17th and 18th-century Cape Dutch architecture and French Huguenot heritage that shaped the region's early farming towns. Each of these is available as a private, guided tour — paced to your interests, whether that's history, heritage, wildlife or the outdoors.
District Six & the City Bowl
The District Six Museum, the Bo-Kaap, and the Company's Garden — Cape Town's colonial and apartheid-era core, walked or driven with context.
Robben Island
A ferry crossing to the island prison that held Nelson Mandela, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and museum.
Table Mountain & the Peninsula
Table Mountain, Cape Point, and the Cape of Good Hope — the natural landmarks that first drew ships to this coast in the 1600s.
See Cape Town's history and its coastline in one trip.
We'll build a private itinerary around what interests you most — heritage, wildlife or the outdoors.
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