Pretoria is the rare capital where the best views cost nothing: the Union Buildings terraces, Freedom Park's Reeds walk and Church Square are all free. Add R25 kotas, R60 museum entry and R15 bus rides and three full days fit under R700.
The 9-metre bronze Mandela statue and Herbert Baker's sandstone amphitheatre sit in gardens open free daily from sunrise to sunset. Walk the terraces, the Delville Wood memorial and the Police Memorial; only the interiors are closed to the public.
Anton van Wouw's 1899 Paul Kruger statue anchors the square ringed by the Ou Raadsaal, Palace of Justice (Rivonia Trial venue) and Tudor Chambers. Benches, pigeons and civil servants at lunch; entirely free to wander and photograph.
Hilltop memorial on Salvokop with the 697-metre Wall of Names and boulders from all nine provinces. Guided walks run roughly hourly and the sightline sweeps to the Voortrekker Monument across the valley — one of Pretoria's great cheap panoramas.
Pretoria has roughly 70,000 jacarandas and this quiet residential run below Klapperkop is where locals shoot the purple tunnel without the Herbert Baker Street traffic. Free, walkable, and glowing in the last hour of light from late October.
Pretoria's oldest trading quarter, where Indian spice shops, fabric stalls and fruit vendors line Boom and Bloed Street. Samoosas run R8–R12, a kilo of tomatoes about R20, and the Miriammen Temple sits in the middle of it all.
A quarter-loaf kota stuffed with chips, polony, atchar, cheese and a fried egg runs R25–R45 at the informal counters around the square's Helen Joseph Street edge. Bunny chow and vetkoek with mince go for under R35.
The city's collection of Irma Stern, Gerard Sekoto and Pierneef canvases sits in a 1964 modernist block beside Arcadia Park. Entry is one of the cheapest museum tickets in Gauteng and the galleries are usually near-empty on weekday afternoons.
University of Pretoria's drinking street runs on student prices: draught around R30, pizza and burger specials R60–R90 on weeknights, and Hatfield Square's successor bars run happy hours until 19:00. Backpackers cluster two blocks north.
One of four 1898 Boer forts guarding Pretoria, sitting on a 1,500-metre ridge with the best free-ish 360-degree view of the city. Ramparts, cannon and a small military museum inside the stone walls; the drive up is short and steep.
76 hectares split by a quartzite ridge, with a boardwalk trail through indigenous forest and roughly half of South Africa's tree species labelled along the paths. Picnic sites are free to use once you're through the gate.
Municipal reserve 4km from the CBD with zebra, giraffe, kudu and impala on marked trails of 4km, 6km and 10km. No dangerous game, so you walk unguided — the cheapest wildlife encounter within Pretoria's city limits.
The pull-offs along the ridge road below the fort look straight down onto the Union Buildings and the CBD grid as the lights come on. Costs nothing, and the jacaranda haze over Sunnyside is best seen from here in November.