Bloemfontein is where the Orange Free State governed itself for 46 years, where the ANC was founded in 1912, and where 26,000 Boer women and children died in British camps. Three days through the Raadsaal, the camps and the archives.
The 1893 sandstone parliament of the Orange Free State Republic, designed by Lennox Canning in Renaissance Revival style. The republic's Volksraad sat here until the British annexation of 1900. Open weekdays 08:00–16:00, guided tours by arrangement.
Bloemfontein's oldest building, a dung-floored schoolroom raised in 1849 that became the first meeting hall of the Orange Free State Volksraad in 1854. Run by the National Museum. Tuesday–Friday 10:15–15:00, weekends 14:00–17:00.
The 1880 Dutch Reformed mother church by Richard Wocke, its twin Gothic spires modelled on European cathedrals and unique in South Africa. President Brand's funeral was held here in 1888; the churchyard holds Free State republican graves.
Founded 1877, holding the Florisbad Skull — a 259,000-year-old archaic Homo sapiens cranium excavated 45km north of the city — plus Karoo fossils and a reconstructed 1900s Bloemfontein street. Open 08:00–17:00 weekdays.
South Africa's definitive Anglo-Boer War museum (1899–1902), with dioramas, Boer commando equipment and the camp galleries documenting the 26,000 women and children who died in British concentration camps. Mon–Fri 08:00–16:30, weekends 10:00–17:00.
Anton van Wouw's 1913 sandstone obelisk and bronze group commemorating the women and children of the camps, unveiled by Rachel Isabella Steyn. Emily Hobhouse's ashes are interred at its base, as are President and Mrs Steyn.
Built 1929 in neoclassical sandstone, the highest court for non-constitutional matters in South Africa. Its bench handed down both the apartheid-era judgments and the post-1994 reversals; the public gallery admits visitors when appeals are in session.
A 6.5m bronze unveiled in December 2012, looking out over the city from the plateau the British fortified with naval guns in 1900. The hill's name comes from that Royal Navy battery emplaced during the siege year.
The corrugated-iron chapel in Waaihoek where the South African Native National Congress — later the ANC — was founded on 8 January 1912 by Pixley ka Isaka Seme, John Dube and Sol Plaatje. Now a declared heritage precinct and museum.
A 1941 Cape Dutch Revival residence built as the Governor-General's Free State home, later the State President's. Its collections trace South African art from colonial landscape painting through resistance art of the 1980s.
Batho, laid out in 1918, is one of South Africa's oldest surviving townships and the neighbourhood that hosted the 1912 congress delegates. Freedom Square marks the mass meetings and the 1980s civic revolt against the Bloemfontein council.
J.R.R. Tolkien was born here on 3 January 1892 to a Bank of Africa manager who died of rheumatic fever in 1896 and lies in Bloemfontein's President Brand Cemetery. The original Bank House is gone; a plaque and the memorial park mark the site.