10 historical landmarks in South Africa that always fascinate visitors

South African history is extremely diverse and endlessly fascinating. Here are 10 historical landmarks that always delight visitors, shared in chronological order.

South Africa’s historical landmarks scene has something for everyone. By this I mean there are excellent sites covering all aspects of human history, from hominid fossils to modern medical breakthroughs, and everything in between. In this blog post, I discuss 10 sites that should appeal to a wide audience and that also highlight different aspects of South African history.

Note: I’ve selected places that as of July 2026 enjoy decent reputations for being well-managed and safe.

1. Sterkfontein Caves (near Johannesburg, Gauteng)

Only a short drive from Johannesburg are the Sterkfontein Caves, a key component of the Fossil Hominid Sites of South Africa, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s more commonly known as the Cradle of Humankind. The 47,000-hectare Cradle region is one of the world’s most important paleoanthropological sites, as it’s yielded over a third of all early hominid fossils ever found.

Notably, it was in the Sterkfontein Caves, in 1947, that palaeontologists discovered the reportedly 2.1-million-year-old Australopithecus skull known as Mrs Ples. Then, in the 1990s, the even older Little Foot was found there.

Today, you can go on a guided tour of the Sterkfontein Caves, which is itself a treat, as the dolomite tunnels are very beautiful. Walking along wooden walkways, you see the excavation sites where the fossils were discovered, and learn many things, including how it can take years to carefully remove a single fossil from its encasing. You can also visit the fossils laboratory, where researchers and the technical team clean, sort, document, and catalogue fossils from across the Cradle of Humankind.

2. San rock art of Game Pass Shelter (Drakensberg, KwaZulu-Natal)

Another top historical landmark in South Africa that’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site is Game Pass Shelter in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains. This collection of ancient San Bushmen rock paintings is one of the densest and most spectacular in all of Southern Africa. It’s also especially moving as the San – who roamed all of Southern Africa since time immemorial – were killed and pushed out of the mountains in the nineteenth century and so lost access to the site, which is sacred to them.

The art panels of Game Pass Shelter are large and vibrant. They show humans, animals, and therianthropes (half-human, half-animal figures). The collection has been called the Rosetta Stone of San rock art, as it helped historians prove that such images represent deep spiritual trance journeys. Of particular note is the “Dying Eland” painting, which shows a shaman absorbing the power of a dying eland; it’s one of the most studied prehistoric artworks on Earth.

To visit Game Pass Shelter, you join a guided hike that’s about 7.5 km (4.6 mi) as a round trip.

3. Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex (Mossel Bay, Western Cape)

In 1488, Portuguese explorer Bartholomeu Dias and his crew became the first Europeans to visit the land that is today South Africa. After edging their way around the tip of Africa, the crew first set foot on land along the southern coastline in what would become the town of Mossel Bay.

Today, there’s an excellent museum complex you can visit to see a magnificent life-sized replica of the caravel helmed by Dias. You can also visit the centuries-old milkwood tree that from 1500 served as South Africa’s first ‘post office’.

Note that the Dias Museum complex also covers many other, very varied aspects of South Africa’s human and natural history. For instance, there’s also the Shell Museum and Aquarium, the Ethno-Botanical Garden, and the Malay Graves. The latter relates to Indonesian and other prisoners brought here in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by the Dutch East India Company (DEIC). More on the DEIC in the next landmark.

Lastly, note that Mossel Bay is the starting point of the gorgeous Garden Route road trip.

4. Castle of Good Hope (Cape Town, Western Cape)

Cape Town is famously South Africa’s first or ‘mother’ city. It was the site chosen by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 when they arrived, under the leadership of Jan van Riebeeck, to create a settlement. That settlement was called the Cape of Good Hope at the time, and so the fortress they built between 1666 and 1679 was named the Kasteel de Goede Hoop (Castle of Good Hope).

Today, the Castle of Good Hope is the oldest surviving colonial-era building in South Africa. After careful restoration in the 1980s, it’s also, according to the Castle of Good Hope website, “considered the best-preserved example of a 17th-century architectural structure in the entire world.”

The Dutch built the fortress in response to tensions in Europe with the British and French. Over a century later, in 1795, those fears were realised when the British seized control of the Cape Colony. And thus began the long conflict between the Dutch settlers (now known as Boers) and British colonists, which proved a defining feature of South African history into the twentieth century. So do visit the Castle of Good Hope if you’re keen to understand the beginnings of South Africa’s tumultuous colonial era.

5. Voortrekker Monument (Pretoria, Gauteng)

Arguably the most impressive and arresting structure in this list of historical landmarks in South Africa is the Voortrekker Monument.

The Voortrekkers (‘pioneers’ in Afrikaans) were the roughly 12,000 Boers who took part in the Great Trek of the late 1830s. This trek saw mostly farmers from the Cape Colony migrate north into the interior of present-day South Africa. They were fleeing the British, wanting a country of their own.

The wagon-based journey undertaken by the Voortrekkers was long, arduous, and very dangerous. They had to deal with steep escarpments and water-poor landscapes, for instance, as well as armed conflicts with the indigenous peoples whose territiories they were invading.

The Great Trek soon became a core symbol of the Afrikaner nationalist movement. The Voortrekker Monument was built between 1937 and 1949 to commemorate their story. It’s a colossal granite structure that houses the world’s longest continuous marble frieze. This frieze depicts scenes of their harrowing journeys and battles. The museum complex also has an outdoor “Living Laager” that shows what it was like to live in ox-wagon laagers.

Whatever your opinion of the Boers and their decision to push into the interior, most will agree that they showed immense fortitude and courage. Certainly, the Great Trek has played an enormous role in shaping the country, making the Voortrekker Monument an invaluable place for learning about South African history.

6. Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift (northern KwaZulu-Natal)

Military history enthusiasts, especially from the UK, should visit two adjacent battle sites from the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War: Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift.

For the Battle of Isandlwana, you’ll stand in an unassuming valley bowl with an inselberg rising above it. In the company of a good guide, you’ll picture the spot occupied by an encampment of 1,800 red-uniformed British soldiers during the scorching morning heat of 22 January 1879. Then you’ll imagine the scene when about 20,000 impi (Zulu warriors) emerged on the surrounding hilltops. They banged their spears against their shields in an intimidating sound wave before descending and killing all but a few who managed to escape. (Note that the featured image for this blog post shows the memorial at Isandlwana for the fallen impi.)

Yet it wasn’t all defeat on the British side that day. That afternoon, 4,000 reserve impi attacked the nearby colonial supply depot and hospital at Rorke’s Drift (shown above). Astonishingly, the roughly 140 British soldiers inside successfully defended the outpost for 12 hours, at which time the Zulus retreated. Today, the building is a museum with life-sized models that show how the vastly outnumbered men managed to hold their ground.

7. Anglo-Boer War Museum (Bloemfontein, Free State)

Did you know South Africa has the shameful honour of being one of the first places in the world to use concentration camps? During the Anglo-Boer War (also known as the Second Boer War) of 1899 to 1902, the British created camps for captured Boers and Black Africans. The Boer prisoners were mostly rural women and children, as they were relatively easy to round up since their menfolk were away fighting a guerrilla-style war against the British Army.

The primary cause of the war was Britain’s desire to own the diamond and gold deposits discovered within the Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and Transvaal. The British assumed it would be a quick, easy win, but as Rudyard Kipling noted, they received “no end of a lesson”.

The theatre of the war was enormous, so there are many historical landmarks throughout South Africa you could visit. I’ve chosen the Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein, widely considered one of the best museums about the war.

You can also visit the onsite National Women’s Memorial (shown above). The memorial features a striking sandstone obelisk and moving bronze sculpture of a mourning woman and child. It commemorates the roughly 27,000 Boer women and children who died in concentration camps.

8. Nelson Mandela Capture Site (Howick, KwaZulu-Natal)

Jump forward almost a century to 1962, and Nelson Mandela was on the run from the police as the leader of the underground armed movement fighting the apartheid government. At the time he was, in fact, their most wanted man. They even nicknamed him “the Black Pimpernel” for his ability to evade capture. But on 5 August 1962, reportedly working off a tip from a USA CIA agent, the police finally caught Mandela while he was in the bucolic Natal Midlands. His arrest was followed by the infamous Rivonia Trials and his subsequent imprisonment for 27 years,

The exact spot where Mandela was arrested is today marked by a small but excellent museum. There’s also an outdoor sculpture that consists of 50 massive steel columns which, when viewed from a specific angle, reveal a portrait of the man himself.

You can visit the Capture Site as part of the Midlands Meander, one of South Africa’s best road trips.

9. Robben Island Museum (Table Bay, Cape Town)

Robben Island in Table Bay is one of South Africa’s most famous historical sites as it’s connected to our most famous person, Nelson Mandela. It also clearly showcases the brutality of the apartheid government.

A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Robben Island was a high-security prison during apartheid that housed many political prisoners, including Mandela. It was a desperate place. One reason for this is that the low-lying island gets blasted by every bit of nasty weather in the bay. And Cape Town’s wind is notoriously fierce.

Mandela, like the other prisoners, spent much of his day in a tiny cell measuring 2.4 by 2.1 m (8 by 7 ft). Yet after nearly two decades here, as well as his time spent in other prisons, he emerged with a peaceful agenda of national reconciliation. Truly incredible.

You can catch a ferry to visit Robben Island Museum. Tours take you around the island and prison building and are especially poignant as they’re sometimes led by former political prisoners.

10. Apartheid Museum (Johannesburg)

The Apartheid Museum is widely regarded as one of the most powerful museum experiences in the world. One reason for this, of course, is the moving subject matter. Apartheid was the appalling state-enforced segregation of different racial groups aimed to keep non-whites separate and economically subjugated. It only ended in 1994 with our first democratic elections, which saw the ruling apartheid government roundly ousted.

Another reason for the Apartheid Museum’s popularity is that it’s a very imaginative and dynamic exhibit. You follow a set route that uses film, photos, statues, and more to show the apartheid regime’s rise and fall. The stark and interactive design of the experience provides a visceral education on the injustices of twentieth-century South African life.

I hope I’ve inspired you to visit some of South Africa’s best and most famous historical landmarks. If you browse the packages shared below, you’ll find South African tours that take you to some of the above-mentioned historic sites. As I’m sure you know, you really can’t understand a place and its people without understanding something of their history.

Note: This blog post was created by Leandra Slabbert in August 2018. It was completely rewritten in July 2026 by Megan Abigail White.