Durban's history is layered like nowhere else in South Africa: a Zulu kingdom's harbour, a British colonial port, an indentured-labour landing point, and the birthplace of both satyagraha and the ANC's first president. Three days trace all four.
A working Zulu homestead above the Valley of a Thousand Hills where the Sithole family stages beehive-hut life, sangoma bone-throwing and stick-fighting dances rooted in Shaka's 1820s kingdom. Shows run 10:00, 11:30 and 14:00 daily.
Durban's oldest surviving settler dwelling, an 1849 cottage built for the Goodricke family and furnished as a Victorian Port Natal household — yellowwood floors, cast-iron kitchen, and rooms tracing the town's origins as a trading beachhead.
Raised in 1866 as Durban's first courthouse and still the town's oldest public building, this verandahed brick landmark holds the local-history collection: Port Natal's ivory and hide trade, the 1842 siege of the fort, and early Zulu-British diplomacy.
The lawn in front of City Hall marks where Francis Farewell and Henry Fynn pitched the 1824 trading camp that became Durban, on land granted by King Shaka. The Cenotaph, Farewell memorial and Dick King's 1842 ride frame the founding narrative.
The former Department of Native Affairs, where black Durbanites queued from 1928 for the passes that governed their movement. Exhibits reconstruct the 'Durban System' — beer-hall profits funding influx control — and the 1949 and 1959 uprisings.
The 1910 neo-Baroque City Hall, modelled closely on Belfast's, carries a domed council chamber and a sculpted frieze of colonial Natal. Outside stands the marble Cenotaph, unveiled in 1926, with bronze relief panels by Anton van Wouw.
Roberts House, an 1899 Victorian mansion, holds one of Africa's densest collections of Zulu and Southern African material culture: beadwork love letters, izimbenge basketry, carved headrests, Ndebele dolls and a room of ceremonial puppets.
Consecrated in 1904 beside the Warwick markets, this Gothic Revival cathedral sheltered pass-law refugees and anti-apartheid organisers. Denis Hurley, archbishop from 1947 and one of apartheid's fiercest clerical critics, worked from the house alongside.
John Dube, the ANC's first president, founded this school in 1900 as an African answer to Tuskegee. Nelson Mandela cast his 1994 ballot in the hall here, then walked to Dube's grave on the hill and reported: 'Mr President, I have come to report.'
Gandhi bought 100 acres here in 1904 and built Sarvodaya, the house where he sharpened satyagraha and printed Indian Opinion. Burned during the 1985 unrest and rebuilt in 2000, it now holds a museum of his 21 South African years.
The Second River Temple, built in 1875 by indentured Tamil labourer Kistappa Reddy, is South Africa's oldest Hindu temple — a Dravidian gopuram crowded with painted deities that outlasted Cato Manor's forced removals from 1958 onward.
Morningside keeps an intact run of turn-of-the-century colonial houses — wrought-iron lace, corrugated roofs, deep timber verandahs built for Durban's merchant class — now bars and kitchens working behind carefully preserved facades.