Creative Cape Town

The Company’s Garden is home to a number of important cultural institutions – museums, theatres, cinemas, historic religious and educational facilities and the Houses of Parliament.    

The Company’s Garden plays an important part in the history of the city and takes its name from the Dutch East India Company who set it up as a vegetable garden for its ships passing the Cape.  It was laid out by Jan van Riebeeck, often considered the founder of modern South Africa.  

Today it is a large public park and heritage site popular with locals and visitors.  It hosts a visitors centre with an exhibition on the history of the Company’s Garden, an aviary, a rose garden and a restaurant. 

For more info on the Company’s Garden see its website Cape Town Gardens

Surrounding the Company’s Garden are a number of important cultural institutions:

Iziko South African Museum 
The Iziko SA Museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It houses important African zoology, palaeontology and archaeology collections.  It has a popular planetarium as well as exhibits of rock art by indigenous people.

Iziko South African National Gallery
Paintings, works on paper, photography, sculpture, beadworks, textiles and architecture depict the wide range of aesthetic production in this country and beyond.

Iziko Bertram House
A historic Georgian House that has been furnished to give and impression of life in a well to do English Home during the early years of British occupation two centuries back.

The Labia Theatre
The Labia is the oldest independent art cinema in the country. Originally a ballroom for the Italian Embassy, it was opened as a live theatre by Princess Labia in 1949.

Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts (GIPCA)
GIPCA brings together various centres and departments in the arts and media in the University of Cape Town’s Faculty of Humanities and provides opportunities for students and artists to collaborate, exhibit and perform.

South African Jewish Museum
The South African Jewish Museum narrates the story of the South African Jewish community from its early beginnings. The Oldest Synagogue in South Africa serves as the entrance to this interactive and high-tech museum and kosher/vegetarian cafe.

The Cape Town Holocaust Centre
The first Holocaust Centre in Africa, it is a place of remembrance of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust and all other victims of Nazism, and a place of learning about the tragic consequences of racism and xenophobia.

The St. George Cathedral
This Gothic Building, designed by architects Herbert Baker and Francis Masey, is the seat of the Anglican Church in Southern Africa. The building was started in 1901 and replaced an 1834 church.  Light a candle at the sculpture of the Black Madonna or gaze at the stain glass windows designed by French artist Gabriel Loire. The windows depict unconventional imagery that alludes to the Cathedral‘s role during the anti-apartheid struggle years. The Cathedral has become known as the People’s Cathedral. Experience a spiritual journey by walking the labyrinth.

The Crypt Memory and Witness Centre
A component of the St.George’s Cathedral.  It explores the cathedral’s rich social history, particularly during the struggle against apartheid, through exhibitions, conversations, storytelling and educational programmes, linking these to the current socio-political context.

Iziko Slave Lodge
The Slave Lodge is one of Cape Town’s oldest buildings with a rich history. Originally constructed to house the slaves of the VOC, it regularly hosts exhibitions and events.

Church Square
A public space where once the infamous slave tree stood and where people from African and South East Asia were sold into bondage.  It hosts a more recent slave memorial. 

The Iziko Social History Centre
This grand building opens onto Church Square and is the collections store of the Iziko Museums group.  It has an important social history library open to researchers on its ground floor.

National Library of South Africa (Cape Town)  
This is a statutory body which holds published materials relating to South Africa, dating back centuries. It was the first library in South Africa, and opened in 1818. The library is open to researchers and the general public, and entrance is free. The NLSA has thematic exhibitions from its historic collections in the Red Space throughout the year, and occasionally hosts events and functions.  Click here for bookings.

Centre for the Book
The Centre for the Book, a unit of the National Library of South Africa, promotes a culture of reading, writing and publishing in all local languages, and easy access to books for all South Africans.

Cape Town High
Opened in 1860, Cape Town High is one of Cape Town’s oldest schools, with a cosmopolitan history.

 The area hosts a number of prominent hotels in its immediate surrounds such as the Taj Palace, the Mount Nelson Hotel, Mandela Rhodes Place, 15 on Orange and the Cape Hollow.  In addition there are a few excellent restaurants in the immediate vicinity including Five Flies, Doppio Zero, Brio, Societi Bistro and Nona Lisa.  In addition Company’s Garden is close to the entertainment district of Long Street, the boutiques up Kloof Street, the cafe environment around Dunkley Square and the St. Georges Mall pedestrian shopping environment.

Get to the area with public transport by catching the City’s IRT inner city bus route and get off and on near the Mount Nelson Hotel or use the Bloem and Long St stop.