Cape Town's culture runs on two currents: a commercial gallery scene selling Muholi and Sekoto to the world, and a township studio circuit that never left. Three days covers both, plus Cape jazz played nightly under a cathedral.
Nine galleries and a sculpture garden set in a Tokai wetland reserve, opened 2018 for Alexis Preller, Edoardo Villa and Serge Alain Nitegeka retrospectives. The permanent Gerard Sekoto room anchors it. Wed–Sun 09:00–17:00.
South Africa's oldest art museum, in the Company's Garden since 1930, holding roughly 8,000 works from Irma Stern to Mary Sibande. Rotating exhibitions fill nine halls; the Brenthurst collection of African art is the standout.
Cape Town's commercial gallery spine runs along Sir Lowry Road in Woodstock. Stevenson, in the Buchanan Building, shows Zanele Muholi and Moshekwa Langa; Goodman Gallery and WHATIFTHEWORLD sit within three blocks.
Cast-iron filigree balconies run almost unbroken for six blocks between Wale Street and Buitensingel, the largest surviving Victorian streetscape in the southern hemisphere. The Palm Tree Mosque at No. 185 dates to 1780.
The 1679 Dutch East India Company slave lodge on Adderley Street, the second-oldest building in the city, now a museum of slavery and human rights. Upper floors hold Cape silver, ceramics and ancient Egyptian antiquities.
The 1652 Company vegetable plot that fed passing ships, now six hectares of public garden with a saffron pear tree planted around 1652, a rose garden, an aviary and the Delville Wood war memorial along Government Avenue.
The Foreshore's 1971 brutalist theatre complex, home to Cape Town Opera and Cape Town City Ballet across three stages. The Opera House seats 1,487; the foyer carries a monumental Cecil Skotnes carved-panel mural.
Live jazz most nights in the vaulted stone crypt beneath St George's Cathedral, Desmond Tutu's former seat. Cape jazz regulars play two sets from 20:00 in a room that holds barely a hundred people.
A former Methodist church holding the memory of 60,000 people forcibly removed from District Six after the 1966 whites-only declaration. The floor is a hand-annotated street map — former residents wrote their own addresses onto it.
Langa's mosaic-clad arts centre, opened 2000, with working ceramic and beadwork studios, a 300-seat amphitheatre and a children's theatre built from shipping containers. Resident artists sell straight from their workbenches.
A butchery-braai running since 2003: choose raw meat at the counter, hand it to the back kitchen, then eat it with pap and chakalaka at communal tables while a DJ works the yard. Loudest and fullest on Sunday afternoons.
Rose Street supper club running since 1998, with live marimba, Xhosa gospel and township jazz six nights a week, and a menu built on springbok, ostrich carpaccio and smoked snoek pâté.