Castle of Good Hope
South Africa's oldest building — a pentagonal VOC fort that once faced the sea and now sits landlocked by centuries of reclaimed ground.
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Built between 1666 and 1679 as a stone resupply base for Dutch East India Company ships rounding the Cape, it replaced a clay-and-timber predecessor and remains the best-preserved VOC fort in existence. Up to 60,000 enslaved people from Madagascar, Mozambique, India, and the Dutch Indies provided much of the labour.
What to look for
- The five bastions named after William III of Orange-Nassau's titles — Leerdam, Buuren, Katzenellenbogen, Nassau, and Oranje — clockwise around the walls
- The bell tower over the main entrance, added in 1684
- The landward gate installed in 1682, which replaced the original entrance that had faced Table Bay
Entry is through the 1682 landward gate; the fort sits inland in central Cape Town — Table Bay once lapped its walls before land reclamation pushed the shoreline away.
Castle of Good Hope is one of 7 sights worth the detour in Cape Town, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Cape Town pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Cape Town
- Cape Town StadiumThe World Cup bowl squeezed between Signal Hill and the Atlantic is still Cape Town's biggest live-sport stage.
- Table Mountain National ParkThe park runs the full spine of the Cape Peninsula — city overlooks at one end, the most southwestern point of Africa at the other.
- South African Astronomical ObservatoryEvery day at noon, a cannon fires on Signal Hill — triggered by a time signal sent from this observatory.
- Kirstenbosch National Botanical GardenThe world's first garden built exclusively for native plants — founded in 1913 when nobody else thought invasive species were a problem.
- Royal Observatory, Cape of Good HopeThe hill where astronomers first measured the distance to a star — then lost the credit for it.
- The Blue TrainA 27-hour rolling palace between Cape Town and Pretoria — the same carriages that carried Nelson Mandela and Margaret Thatcher across 1,600 kilometres of South Africa.