Skip to content
Get the app
Cape Town History and Monuments

Cape Town History and Monuments

Cape Town · South Africa

6 stops3.9 km2 h 39 min
  • Audio guide
  • 4 languages
  • Offline

Walk through Cape Town’s historical record in buildings, memorials, churches, archives and a heritage park. Pause at each stop to see how different places preserve civic, religious and political memories. The Berlin Wall segment offers a direct memorial object, while the churches and archives connect public history with worship and documentary records. This compact walk is worth taking for its range of visible reminders of the past.

The walk

  1. Cape Town Central Library

    Cape Town Central Library

    A working library whose history runs through segregation, music, art, and public access.

  2. Berlin Wall segment

    Berlin Wall segment

    Berlin Wall segment memorial in Cape Town, South Africa

  3. St. George's Cathedral

    St. George's Cathedral

    A cathedral built in stages, and remembered as the People’s Cathedral of apartheid resistance.

  4. Groote Kerk

    Groote Kerk

    A church rebuilt in 1841, carrying Cape Town’s worship back to the first Dutch congregation.

  5. Western Cape Archives and Records

    Western Cape Archives and Records

    Western Cape Archives and Records, a heritage archive on Roeland Street

  6. De Waal Park

    De Waal Park

    A public park born between Cape Town’s reservoirs, with a Victorian bandstand and a century of civic history.

Data: OpenStreetMap contributors and Google Places

More walks in Cape Town

2 walks

How a walk works

The guide starts talking when you arrive.

This page is the map and the itinerary. The app is the guide who walks it with you.

  1. Pick a walk

    Every stop is a real place, already in walking order.

  2. Pocket your phone

    Follow the line on the live map, or download the walk before you lose signal.

  3. Listen as you arrive

    On a narrated walk the story starts on its own at each stop, so your eyes stay on the place.

Continue in the app

Free to install · Every city’s featured walk is free, start to finish.

  • A guide who talks

    Narration at every stop, starting on its own as you arrive — phone in your pocket.

  • The route, followed

    A live map with the turns called out, and a way back whenever you wander off it.

  • In four languages

    English, French, Spanish and Arabic — the words and the voice, not just the labels.

  • Or build your own

    Pick the places you actually want and the app works out the order to walk them in.

  • The unglamorous things

    Toilets, pharmacies, cash points and water, without leaving the walk.

  • No signal needed

    Download a walk before you go and it works under a souk roof or on a plane.

  • Picks up where you left off

    Stop for lunch, come back tomorrow, and the walk is exactly where you left it.