The heartbeat of Cape Town, the CBD area is the gateway to all that the city has to offer. A place where businesses, restaurants, coffee shops, museums, street vendors, buskers, craft markets, nightclubs and sports all meet in the joyful union, servicing both the tourist and resident in beautiful unity.

The CBD makes for the perfect base to explore all that the Mother City has to offer, with most attractions being a short walk or bus ride away. With unique and interesting coffee shops, craft beer houses, restaurants of all kinds, and the most amazing selection of bars and nightclubs, you’ll be spoilt for choice.

Within a short walking distance is the world-famous V&A Waterfront, home to many international brands, as well as leading local retailers, and unique boutique-style shops.  Littered with food stalls, restaurants, takeaways and hotels, you could enjoy meals from around the world, at prices to suit all budgets. 

The CBD of Cape Town is also where the nightlife comes alive – the streets are jammed packed with alternative bars and nightclubs, catering towards a wide taste of music, entertainment and enjoyment for people from all walks of life.  Famous for it’s First Thursday,  a core cultural programme including art galleries, performances, and other cultural attractions, with a supporting programme of retail, restaurants and bars where the CBD streets are closed for traffic and locals are encouraged to visit art galleries, shops, bars and restaurants on foot.

Central to the Mother City is Parliament Street, where the Houses of Parliament are based, as well as some great local museums, including the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, Bo-Kaap Museum, District Six Museum, Cape Town City Hall, South African Jewish Museum, and the South African National Gallery. 

Alongside Parliament Street is The Company Gardens, the green lung of Cape Town – the perfect spot to enjoy the quiet of nature, and the beauty of the oldest garden in South Africa, home to plants that can be dated as far back as the 1650s.  Here you can feed the multitude of squirrels, and birds, who are happy to eat straight from your hands.

Cape Town Holiday Rentals history and culture

Cape Town is the oldest city in South Africa. Its rich colonial history has endowed the city with some distinctive old buildings in the distinctive Cape Dutch style with its whitewashed walls, ornate gables and thatched roofs. Some of the best examples of these are to be found on the many wineries, the m ost easily accessible of which is Groot Constantia in Cape Town’s southern suburbs. An easy stroll along the Historical Mile between Muizenberg and Kalk Bay will take you past Posthuys, the oldest building in South Africa.

A host of museums on a huge range of the usual subjects like natural history, cultural history and just plain ordinary history complement the smaller ones like the District Six Museum, a doll museum and a police museum. But there is more to culture than the stuff found in museums. Culture is about how people live — how they organise their lives. So you can choose from a range of cultural tours. Most involve a drive out to one or more of the townships of Nyanga, Langa, Gugulethu, Crossroads or Khayelitsha, where you can see how local people live, visit historic sites mostly pertaining to the struggle against apartheid, shop in the open air markets, enjoy a drink or a meal at a shebeen (township tavern) and, if you like, even consult a traditional healer or sangoma.