Museum · V&A Waterfront
Zeitz MOCAA
Contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora in Thomas Heatherwick's carved-out 1920s grain silo (2017).
Look for: The atrium cut through the concrete tubes.
Book ahead
Go further, look closer.
Cities · Africa · 33°55′S 18°25′E
Cape Town
A museum in a grain silo, a sculpture garden in a wetland, and a city where history is still a public argument.
Best monthsFebruary (the art fair) and October–April
Art calendarInvestec Cape Town Art Fair (February)
This guide4 essentials · 4 places off-piste
Essentials
Foundation · Steenberg
Norval Foundation
A museum and sculpture garden in the Constantia wetlands, with a large holding of 20th-century South African art and a strong programme of modern masters.
Look for: The sculpture garden along the reed beds.
Check opening days
Museum · Company's Garden
Iziko South African National Gallery
The national collection, in the Company's Garden, the Dutch East India Company's vegetable garden of the 1650s. Collected for a century in the image of Europe, now being rehung.
Look for: The modern South African works, and the way the hang argues with the old ones.
Check opening days
Artist house · Rondebosch
Irma Stern Museum
The expressionist painter's house of almost forty years, with her paintings and her collection of Congolese carvings, Buddhist sculpture and Spanish furniture.
Look for: Her studio, left as it was.
Check opening days
Off the list
Off-Piste in Cape Town
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
Neighbourhood · Signal Hill
Bo-Kaap
Steep streets of brightly painted houses, the home of the Cape Malay community, many descended from people enslaved and brought from Southeast Asia by the Dutch.
The Bo-Kaap Museum, in an 18th-century house.
Museum · Buitenkant Street
District Six Museum
The memory of a neighbourhood razed under apartheid, in a former Methodist church; former residents work here.
The floor map annotated by former residents.
Collection · Buitenkant Street
Rust en Vreugd
An 18th-century townhouse holding the William Fehr Collection of watercolours, prints and drawings of the Cape, with a restored period garden.
The garden.
Church · Wale Street
St George's Cathedral
Herbert Baker's cathedral, known as the People's Cathedral: Desmond Tutu led marches against apartheid from its steps.
The labyrinth outside, and the Tutu memorial.
Nearby
Stellenbosch
The Rupert Museum and the art collections of the wine estates, under an hour away.
Hermanus and the coast
Whales from the cliffs (June–November), about 90 minutes away.
If you have one day
Company's Garden and the National Gallery → District Six Museum → Bo-Kaap → Zeitz MOCAA → sunset at the Waterfront.