Gaborone was a village of 3,800 people when it became a capital in 1966. Three days here trace Botswana from Kalahari rock-art peoples to the dikgosi who out-argued Cecil Rhodes in London, and to a republic built from scratch on diamond revenue.
Opened 1968 on Independence Avenue. Galleries cover San rock art, Tswana material culture and Bechuanaland Protectorate archives. Open Tue–Fri 09:00–18:00, weekends 09:00–17:00; the ethnography wing holds Iron Age pottery from Toutswemogala.
The museum's rock-art hall reproduces the Tsodilo Hills panels — 4,500 paintings across northwestern Botswana, some dated beyond 20,000 years, made by San ancestors. Panels of eland, rhino and whales explain the ritual trance imagery.
The 1,287 m quartzite ridge on Gaborone's southwest edge carries stone-walled terraces and grinding hollows from Iron Age farming communities, plus 19th-century quarry scars from the stone that built the first colonial Gaborone.
Gaborone's first informal settlement, founded 1968 by construction workers who built the capital and threatened with demolition until President Khama regularised it in 1975 — the first squatter-upgrading scheme in southern Africa.
Three 5.4 m bronzes of Kgosi Sebele I, Kgosi Bathoen I and Kgosi Khama III, unveiled 2005. In 1895 the chiefs sailed to London and petitioned Joseph Chamberlain against Rhodes's British South Africa Company taking Bechuanaland — and won.
The National Assembly opened 1966 at the head of the Mall. The bronze of Sir Seretse Khama — first president, whose marriage to Ruth Williams caused a British exile from 1950 to 1956 — stands in the forecourt facing the chamber.
Holds Bechuanaland Protectorate files from the 1885 declaration to 1966 independence, including District Commissioner records from Mafikeng, where Botswana was administered from outside its own borders for 80 years. Open Mon–Fri 07:30–16:30.
The dam was completed in 1964 specifically to make a capital possible on a waterless site — the water came first, then the city. Standing on the wall explains why Gaborone sits exactly here rather than at Lobatse, the original candidate.
Forty minutes north, on a hilltop above the Bakgatla capital, in a 1920 school built by tribal levy. Displays cover the Bakgatla-ba-Kgafela migration from the Transvaal in 1871 and the regiment system. Open Mon–Fri 08:00–17:00.
The customary court of the Batlokwa, who settled here in the 1880s. Cases are still heard under the tree by the kgosi on weekday mornings, applying customary law recognised in Botswana's constitution alongside the Roman-Dutch courts.
Founded 1982 out of the shared Botswana-Lesotho-Swaziland university that opened in 1964. Special Collections holds the Khama family papers, liberation-era ANC exile material and oral-history recordings from the 1970s Setswana language survey.
Marks the 14 June 1985 South African Defence Force cross-border raid on suspected ANC houses in Gaborone that killed twelve people, including a six-year-old and Botswana nationals — the moment Botswana's neutrality was tested by apartheid.