Johannesburg holds Africa's densest concentration of contemporary art — Goodman, Everard Read and Stevenson all within a few blocks — plus a 1930s Art Deco skyline, a 1,000-seat opera house and printmaking studios where William Kentridge still works.
Africa's largest art museum by collection size — 9,000 works in a 1915 Edwin Lutyens building. Strong holdings of Gerard Sekoto, Irma Stern and 17th-century Dutch prints. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00, closed Mon. Entry free.
The gallery that represents William Kentridge, David Goldblatt's estate and Ghada Amer, operating since 1966 as an anti-apartheid non-racial exhibition space. Two large halls on Jan Smuts Avenue. Tue–Fri 09:30–17:00, Sat 09:30–16:00.
South Africa's oldest commercial gallery (founded 1913) beside CIRCA — a windowless elliptical drum by Pierre Swanepoel, wrapped in laser-cut aluminium screens, with a spiral ramp to a top-lit sculpture room. Mon–Fri 09:00–18:00.
Joburg's 173m hollow-core cylinder of 1975, the tallest residential tower in Africa, seen with the 1930s Art Deco blocks of Killarney and Yeoville. Dlala Nje runs the only legitimate inside-the-core tours from Ponte's ground floor.
The 'Theatre of the Struggle' — a converted 1913 Indian fruit market where Woza Albert! and Sizwe Banzi premiered. Three stages plus the Market Photo Workshop, the school David Goldblatt founded in 1989 that trained Zanele Muholi.
The Victorian cast-iron pavilion that became Kippies Jazz International, where Hugh Masekela and Bheki Mseleku played, on the square named for South Africa's first woman trade unionist. The Bassline club moved here from Melville in 2003.
A glass-fronted former Ford showroom holding 13,000 works, with the strongest Central African collection in the country — Chokwe thrones, Luba stools, Tsonga headrests — shown against contemporary South African painting. Wed–Sun 10:00–16:00.
The 1962 civic complex with a 1,066-seat Nelson Mandela Theatre plus the Mannie Manim and Fringe stages — home to Joburg Ballet and the annual Christmas pantomime, and a regular venue for the Johannesburg Philharmonic.
A working intaglio and lithography studio where Kentridge, Deborah Bell and Diane Victor pull editions on a Charles Brand press. The gallery sits above, so you watch plates being inked then see the finished prints. Tue–Fri 09:00–17:00.
A century-old Zulu traders' market in former railway compound sheds — traditional healers' muthi stalls, isicathamiya practice, hide shields, beadwork and grilled meat cooked over drums by the men who make the drums.
Three cube-shaped auditoria clad in yellow, red and blue tile by Afritects, opened 2012 in Jabulani — 420, 180 and 90 seats programming isiZulu-language drama, poetry slams and gumboot dance from Soweto companies.
Sophiatown Bar Lounge and the Melville strip carry the drinking-and-debating tradition of the 1950s Drum-magazine set — Can Themba and Nat Nakasa's Sophiatown was bulldozed in 1955 and renamed Triomf; the name returned in 2006.