Museums

Do not miss the Robben Island Museum, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years.

For nearly 400 years, Robben Island, 12 kilometres from Cape Town, was a place of banishment, exile, isolation and imprisonment. It was here that rulers sent those whom they regarded as political troublemakers, social outcasts and the unwanted of society.

Robben Island has come to symbolise, not only for South Africa and the African continent, but also for the entire world, the triumph of the human spirit over enormous hardship and adversity.

Daily trips to Robben Island from the V&A Waterfront
www.robben-island.org.za

The Museum was established in 1978 as a satellite of the SA Cultural History Museum. It was furnished as a house that depicts the lifestyle of a nineteenth-century Muslim family.

Today the museum is in a transformation stage. The Museum is managed by Iziko Museums, an amalgamation of five national museums that includes the SA Cultural History Museum and its satellites.

71 Wale Street, Cape Town
www.museums.org.za/bokaap

For every object on exhibition at the South African Museum, there are thousands more carefully stored away. The Museum houses more than one and a half million specimens of scientific importance.

For nearly 200 years scientists at the Museum have been adding to these collections and studying them. The collections now range from fossils almost 700 million years old to insects and fish caught last week.

There are also stone tools made by people 120 000 years ago, traditional clothes from the last century, and T-shirts printed yesterday.

25 Queen Victoria Street, Gardens, Cape Town
www.museums.org.za

The Slave Lodge is one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town.

The many names of the building over three centuries - Slave Lodge, Government Offices Building, Old Supreme Court, and SA Cultural History Museum - reflect the long and rich history of the building.

Corner of Adderley and Wale Streets
www.museums.org.za

Irma Stern (1894-1966), was a major South African artist who achieved national and international recognition in her lifetime.

The permanent collection on display shows Irma Stern's development as an artist whose subject matter included exotic figures, portraits, lush landscapes and still lifes conveyed in a variety of media, ranging from oils and water colours to gouache and charcoal.

University of Cape Town, Irma Stern Museum is governed by the University of Cape Town and the Trustees of the Irma Stern Estate.

Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town