Visiting Cape Town, South Africa: Top Sights on Foot

The best things to do in Cape Town include exploring its historic centre, museums, churches, waterfront and dramatic Cape Peninsula landscapes. From the Castle of Good Hope and Bo-Kaap to the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point, the city brings together layered history, contemporary culture and striking ocean scenery. Neywo offers a free audio guide for Cape Town with 108 narrated places.

What to See in Cape Town

Cape Town is the capital of the Western Cape, and its story unfolds across a compact historic centre, the slopes of the city and the Cape Peninsula. These are some of the places that reveal its character.

Groote Kerk

Groote Kerk is South Africa’s oldest place of Christian worship and the mother congregation of all Nederduitse Gereformeerde churches in the country. The first church on this site was erected in 1678, while the present building dates from 1841. Its original tower was retained, and the interior includes a pulpit made by Anton Anreith and Jacob Graaff, inaugurated in 1789. The church also houses South Africa’s largest church organ, installed in 1954.

St. George’s Cathedral

St. George’s Cathedral is the Anglican cathedral of Cape Town and the seat of the Archbishop of Cape Town. Designed by Sir Herbert Baker, it is a neo-Gothic building whose construction took place through several campaigns between 1901 and 1978. Known as “the people’s cathedral”, it became an important focal point of resistance against apartheid.

Castle of Good Hope

Built by the Dutch East India Company between 1666 and 1679, the Castle of Good Hope is the oldest surviving colonial building in South Africa. It is also the best-preserved example of a VOC fort and remains surrounded by a canal.

The five-point castle was built to replace an earlier clay and timber fort. Its five bastions were named after titles associated with Willem, Prince of Orange: Leerdam, Buuren, Catzenellenbogen, Nassau and Oranje. The clock tower above the main gate was completed in 1684 and contains an Amsterdam-cast clock that still tells time.

Slave Lodge

The Slave Lodge is one of Cape Town’s oldest buildings and now forms part of the Iziko Museums network. Built by the Dutch East India Company at the end of the 1600s, it originally served as a lodge for people brought to the Cape in slavery.

The building later housed government offices and the Old Supreme Court before becoming the South African Cultural History Museum. Today, its changing role provides a setting for learning about Cape Town’s history and South Africa’s cultural heritage.

Central Public Library Cape Town

The Central Public Library is one of the 102 libraries in the City of Cape Town Library and Information Services. It is the only public library in Cape Town with books in all eleven official South African languages, as well as selected foreign-language titles.

Its facilities include lending and reference sections, art and music areas, more than ninety computers and free Wi-Fi for members. The collection includes books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks and magazines.

Bo-Kaap Museum

The Bo-Kaap Museum is located in one of Cape Town’s most distinctive historic neighbourhoods. The Bo-Kaap is associated with colourful homes and Cape Malay heritage, while the museum offers a place to explore the area’s history.

Company’s Garden and its museums

Company’s Garden is home to several important cultural institutions. The Iziko South African Museum, founded in 1825, is South Africa’s first museum. Its collections cover African zoology, palaeontology and archaeology, including fossils dating back nearly 700 million years, insect and fish specimens, and a major butterfly collection.

Nearby, the Iziko South African National Gallery traces its origins to 1872, when Sir Thomas Butterworth Bayley donated his private gallery. Its exhibitions include a rotating permanent collection and temporary shows, while the museum also works to repatriate objects taken from South Africa over the last two hundred years.

Cape Town Holocaust Centre

In the Gardens neighbourhood, the Cape Town Holocaust Centre focuses on remembrance, education, human rights and diversity. Opened in 1999, it was the first Holocaust centre on the African continent. Its permanent exhibition uses archival photographs, film footage, documents, multimedia displays and recreated environments to tell the stories of victims and survivors of the Nazi regime and of genocides before and since the Holocaust.

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa

At the V&A Waterfront, the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa occupies a historic grain silo transformed by architect Thomas Heatherwick. Opened in 2017, it is dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.

The museum includes temporary exhibitions, a permanent collection, an art education centre, a fellowship programme and an artist-in-residence atelier. The original silo operated until 2001, before its conversion began in 2014.

Cape Medical Museum

The Cape Medical Museum sits in the historic Old City Hospital Complex in Green Point. Its displays cover dentistry, hospital care, traditional African medicine and pharmaceutical developments. Founded in the 1980s by volunteers led by Professor J C De Villiers, it later became a Provincial Museum of the Western Cape government.

Cape of Good Hope

The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic edge of the Cape Peninsula, within Table Mountain National Park. It served as a waypoint on historic sea routes to the Far East and Australia. In 1487, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first modern mariner to round the cape, originally naming it Cabo das Tormentas, or “Cape of Storms”.

Despite its fame, the Cape of Good Hope is not Africa’s southernmost point. That distinction belongs to Cape Agulhas, around 150 kilometres to the east-southeast.

Cape Point

Cape Point rises 243 metres above sea level at the southwestern edge of Africa. The promontory forms part of the mountainous Cape Peninsula and is included in Table Mountain National Park. Its peak is made mostly of sandstone, and a white-sand beach lies below it.

Cape Point is also a place for angling and picnics, with broad ocean views across this dramatic landscape. For another perspective on the peninsula, continue to Simon’s Town.

Lichtenstein Castle

Lichtenstein Castle, also known as Castle Lichtenstein, is a mock castle perched on the Karbonkelberg in Hout Bay. It was built as a replica of the original Lichtenstein Castle in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and occupies a distinctive position above the surrounding landscape.

Church of the Good Shepherd, Robben Island

The Church of the Good Shepherd is a modest church on Robben Island. Its quiet setting offers a place of worship and reflection amid the island’s surroundings.

Explore Cape Town with a Free Audio Guide

A Cape Town self-guided walking tour lets you explore the city’s history without joining a group or following a fixed schedule. Neywo has six walking tours and one bus route in Cape Town, covering 108 narrated places in total. The walks range from 1.55 to 3.42 kilometres and from 50 to 101 minutes, while the MyCiTi 101 bus route covers 3.1 kilometres in 13 minutes. Together, the tours include 53 narrated stops.

The walks cover the city’s historic core, Company’s Garden and the Museum Mile, Bo-Kaap, District Six, the V&A Waterfront and the slopes of Devil’s Peak. The bus route connects Civic Centre with Gardens and Vredehoek.

Download Neywo and explore Cape Town at your own pace. The app tells the story of each place as you reach it, with no group and no schedule. Narration is available in 11 languages, so you can turn a visit to the Western Cape into your own guided walk.