Between the mountain and the sea, Cape Town and its surrounds have been quietly collecting the unexpected, a submarine in Simon’s Town, a room that still smells of anaesthetic in Observatory, perfume bottles from Roman Egypt in Franschhoek.
ER Lombard/Gallo Images
Most people drive right past. Here’s what they’re missing.
1. District Six Museum
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Few places in Cape Town carry as much weight as this. The District Six Museum documents the forced removal of over 60 000 people from their homes during apartheid and what makes it extraordinary is that many of those people helped build it. The floor map alone, where former residents once marked where their houses stood, stops you mid-step. Come with time to spare and expect to feel something.
- Location: 25A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town CBD
- Cost: From R60
- Website: districtsix.co.za
2. Cape Town Museum of Childhood
Cape Town Museum of Childhood/Facebook
The first museum of childhood on the African continent is tucked into a quiet street in Rondebosch, and it is considerably more affecting than its name suggests. Toys, games, photographs and oral histories pull together the wildly different ways South African children have grown up, across decades and communities that rarely shared the same experience of being young. Adults tend to linger longer than the kids they brought along.
- Location: 3 Milner Road, Rondebosch
- Cost: Free
- Times: Wednesday to Saturday
- Website: museumofchildhood.org.za
3. Heart of Cape Town Museum
Corlie van Aswegen/Facebook
On 3 December 1967, Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first successful human heart transplant inside Groote Schuur Hospital in Observatory. The museum takes you into the actual operating theatres where it happened, largely preserved as they were that night. The guided tour is unhurried and told with detail that the usual history-book version leaves out. It is the kind of place that makes a familiar story feel completely new.
- Location: Groote Schuur Hospital, Observatory
- Times: Guided tours only, at set times book ahead
- Website: heartofcapetown.co.za
4. SAS Assegaai Submarine Museum
Africa’s only submarine museum officially reopened in April 2025, after years of restoration work and a fundraising effort involving over 150 donors. The SAS Assegaai, a French-built Daphné-class vessel launched in 1970 and decommissioned in 2003, now sits in a pair of specially built cradles on dry land in Simon’s Town. Guided tours are led in part by former submariners who served aboard the vessel, which makes the stories of 50 crew members living in those extraordinary quarters feel considerably less abstract.
- Location: Next to the NSRI, Simon’s Town
- Times: Guided tours daily from Simon’s Town 09:30am to 3:30pm
- Website: assegaai-submarine.co.za
5. 18 Gangster Museum
This is unlike any museum in Cape Town. Run partly by former offenders, the 18 Gangster Museum is a living institution designed to offer context and an alternative path, to the gang culture that has shaped the Cape Flats for generations. Immersive imagery, a replica prison cell and candid firsthand storytelling make this one of the most affecting cultural experiences in the city. The four-hour walking tour into the surrounding community goes considerably further.
- Location: Mitchells Plain
- Cost: Museum tour from R90 | Walking tour R450 | Cycling tour R550
- Bookings: Essential | www.gm.co.za or contact via their social pages
6. Wijnland Auto Museum
Most people have spotted the graveyard of old cars visible from the N1 heading towards Paarl and assumed it was a scrapyard. It is not. The Wijnland Auto Museum, founded by Les Boshoff, holds over 400 vehicles, from rusting American Buicks to a Convair aircraft you can actually board and the distinction between lovingly restored and gloriously decrepit is part of the point. Photographers come specifically for the latter. It sits right at the gateway to the Winelands, which makes pairing it with a wine stop a very easy argument to make.
- Location: 60 Tarentaal Road, Joostenberg Vlakte (exit 34 off the N1)
- Cost: Adults R100 | Children under 12, R50
- Website: wijnlandautomuseum.com
7. First South African Perfume Museum
First South African Perfume Museum/Facebook
The Kumanov family have been crafting fragrance in South Africa for over 25 years, and in 2012 they opened the country’s first and still only, perfume museum in Franschhoek. The permanent collection traces the history of scent from Roman glass bottles dating to the second century AD through to modern South African perfumery, including the largest known collection of KWV perfume bottles, once gifted with wine purchases. The adjacent Kumanov Perfumery runs workshops where visitors can build their own signature scent, which is reason enough for a day trip on its own.
- Location: 13 Lambrechts Road, Franschhoek
- Cost: R100, includes access to the Huguenot Memorial Museum, Annex Museum and Huguenot Monument
- Website: firstsouthafricanperfumemuseum.com
8. Zeitz MOCAA – Museum of Contemporary Art Africa
Housed inside the repurposed grain silo at the V&A Waterfront, Zeitz MOCAA is the largest museum dedicated to contemporary African art on the continent. The architecture a cathedral of hollowed-out cylinders, is arresting before a single artwork is seen. Nine floors of rotating exhibitions draw from across Africa and its diaspora and the programming changes often enough to reward return visits. It earns its place on any list, but here it sits at number eight, because the other seven tend to go unvisited.
- Location: Silo District, V&A Waterfront
- Times: Monday to Sunday | 10am to 5:30pm
- Website: zeitz-mocaa.museum
9. Cape Town Diamond Museum
Image: Cape Town Diamond Museum
South Africa’s diamond story began in 1867 when a 15-year-old boy found a transparent rock on his father’s farm along the Orange River. Within a decade, 95% of the world’s diamonds were coming from this country. The Cape Town Diamond Museum, a non-profit and a gift to the public from jeweller Shimansky, picks up that thread and follows it across three billion years, from the geological conditions that form a diamond deep in the Earth’s mantle to the cut, polished stone in a showcase. Life-size replicas of the Cullinan, the Hope and the Taylor-Burton sit alongside specimens of raw kimberlite and original mining equipment. Guided tours run approximately 25 to 40 minutes and end in the Shimansky showroom, which is either a very good or very dangerous place to finish, depending on your willpower.
- Location: Level 1, The Clock Tower, V&A Waterfront
- Times: Monday to Sunday, 9am to 8pm
- Cost: Free for booked tours | Bookings essential
- Online: capetowndiamondmuseum.org
Article by Angelica Rhoda for Cape ETC
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