Windhoek's history is written in stone and silence: Nama-Herero hot springs, an 1890 German garrison, concentration-camp graves at Old Location, and a golden museum tower that answers the colonial statues below it. Three days of the full record.
The natural-history and pre-colonial wing on Robert Mugabe Avenue covers Namibia's Stone Age sequence, San rock-art reproductions, Nama-Herero material culture and the owela board game it is named after. Open Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00, weekends 10:00–13:00 and 14:00–18:00.
The thermal springs that gave Windhoek its Nama name |Ai||Gams ('fire water') and Otjiherero name Otjomuise ('place of steam'). Jonker Afrikaner's Oorlam settled here in 1840 and built a stone church; the springs now feed private plots east of the city.
Namibia's national shrine, 10 km south on the Auas mountainside, opened 26 August 2002. A 34 m marble obelisk, an Unknown Soldier statue and a 26 m bronze mural trace resistance from the 1904 Herero-Nama wars through to 1989. Daily 09:00–17:00.
The oldest surviving building in Windhoek, begun 1890 by Curt von François as the Schutztruppe fort and completed 1892. Its whitewashed walls held the German garrison, then a school, then the national museum. Exterior and courtyard walkable at all hours.
The three-floor North Korean-built museum opened 21 March 2014. The ground floor 'Colonial Repression' gallery documents the 1904–1908 Herero and Nama genocide, Shark Island camp and Von Trotha's extermination order. Tue–Sun 09:00–18:00, lift to the roof.
Unveiled 2014, the bronze shows a Herero man and woman breaking their chains, installed on the exact spot where the German Reiterdenkmal stood from 1912. The plaque reads 'Their blood waters our freedom' — Namibia's official genocide acknowledgement.
Holds the Schutztruppe records, South African mandate files, SWAPO exile papers and the Blue Book of 1918. The public reading room and photo collection of over 40,000 images is open Mon–Fri 08:00–13:00 and 14:00–16:30 to walk-in researchers.
Post Street Mall's raised walkway displays 33 of the 1838 Gibeon meteorite fragments, moved here in 1975. Nearby stood the von François statue erected 1965 and removed 23 November 2022 after student campaigns — the pedestal debate continues.
On 10 December 1959 South African police shot 11 residents protesting forced removal from the Old Location to Katutura. The graves and memorial mark the date now observed as Namibian Women's Day; the township itself was bulldozed in the 1960s.
Katutura means 'we have no permanent dwelling' in Otjiherero — the township built in 1961 for forcibly relocated Black residents, laid out by ethnic group with separate house numbers. Single Quarters were male-only migrant-labour hostels under contract labour.
The Roman Catholic cathedral on Werner List Street, consecrated 1908 by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, whose mission schools educated much of the pre-independence Black elite. Its archive and school stood in contrast to the state's Bantu Education system.
The 1920s Südwest-Brauerei buildings on Tal Street, later Namibia Breweries, now house the Craft Centre and Warehouse Theatre — the venue where anti-apartheid and post-independence Namibian theatre and jazz found a stage from 1989 onward.