The Best Sight in Cape Town, South Africa

Background Illustration for Sights

Cape Town has grown as a city in a way that few others in the world have. Take a good look at the street names. Strand and Waterkant streets (meaning "beach" and "waterside," respectively) are now far from the sea. However, when they were named, they were right on the beach. An enormous program of dumping rubble into the ocean extended the city by a good few square miles (thanks to the Dutch obsession with reclaiming land from the sea). Almost all the city on the seaward side of Strand and Waterkant is part of the reclaimed area of the city known as the Foreshore. If you look at old paintings of the city, you will see that originally waves lapped at the very walls of the castle, now more than half a mile from the ocean.

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa

V&A Waterfront Fodor's choice

Opened in September 2017, the Zeitz is the first major museum dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Inhabiting the massively renovated historic Grain Silo in what is now called the Silo District of the V&A Waterfront, the museum itself is a work of art, reimagined by designer Thomas Heatherwick. Give yourself half a day to go through and look at the provocative and thought-provoking art on the exhibit.