Four days in Pretoria: two monuments on facing hills, still not speaking
Three nights in a capital of wide streets and jacarandas: the presidency and its terraces, the Afrikaner monument and the memorial built to answer it, and a lazy day at Hartbeespoort.
- Length
- 4 days, 3 nights
- Where you stay
- Pretoria
- Places
- 10 across 4 days
South Africa has three capitals and this is the one where the government sits. It is fifty five kilometres from Johannesburg and nothing like it: low, spread out, green, full of civil servants and students, and quiet enough after six that the centre empties.
Two hills south of the middle carry the two buildings that matter. On one, a granite block of 1949 built to commemorate the Afrikaners who trekked north from the Cape. On the other, finished half a century later, a memorial to everybody who died in the wars of resistance and liberation, including the people the first monument was built against. They look straight at each other across a motorway.
Four days is generous for a city this size, and that is the point. The distances are small, the mornings are short, and the spare hours go on a nature reserve inside the city limits and a dam in the mountains an hour west.
Highlights
- Church Square, where Paul Kruger's statue stands outside the courtroom that tried Nelson Mandela
- The Union Buildings terraces, free, open and the best view in the city
- The Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park, facing each other and telling incompatible stories
- Mrs Ples, a two million year old skull, in a museum that charges almost nothing
- Melrose House, where the peace treaty of 1902 was signed in the front room
Where to stay
Pretoria, three nights
The town was laid out in 1855 in a bowl between two ridges, on a river the Setswana speakers called the Apies, and named after a Voortrekker commander. It became the capital of the Boer republic, was taken by the British in 1900, and in 1910 was made the seat of government of the new Union of South Africa, which is why the administration is still here rather than in Cape Town, where parliament sits.
That layering is what makes the city interesting. Inside about four kilometres you have a Boer president's front veranda, the courtroom of the Rivonia Trial, an imperial architect's colonnade, an Afrikaner nationalist monument and a post-apartheid memorial built to argue with it.
It is also, unexpectedly, a green city. Nature reserves start inside the municipal boundary, there are giraffe eight kilometres from parliament, and the streets have more canopy than road.
Day by day
Day 1 in Pretoria
Church Square and the president's house
An easy first afternoon, entirely on foot, in about four blocks of the old centre.
Church Square was the market place of the Boer republic and is still ringed by its institutions. The statue in the middle is Paul Kruger, president of that republic, glowering at the buildings that outlasted him. One of them is the courthouse where the Rivonia Trial ran in 1963 and 1964 and where Nelson Mandela made the speech that ended with him prepared to die.
Kruger's own house is a five minute walk west, and is a modest single storey building with lions on the steps, which tells you most of what you need to know about him.
- 14:00
Church Square
ArchitectureThe best square in the country for reading a city off its buildings: the Palace of Justice on one side, the old Raadsaal parliament on another, the general post office and the Reserve Bank around the rest. Period film crews use it constantly because almost nothing modern is visible from the middle.
- 15:15
Kruger House Museum
ArchitecturePaul Kruger lived here from 1884, in a plain house with a stoep where anybody could come and talk to him in the morning. Inside are his railway saloon car, his top hat and the general sense of a farmer who ended up running a gold rush. Worth an hour, and the guides are good.
- 19:00
Dinner in Hatfield
EatThe student quarter east of the centre, where the restaurants stay open and the centre does not. Fifteen minutes by car from the square.
With more time: The state theatre is two blocks east of the square and is the largest theatre complex on the continent, with something on most evenings and tickets that cost a fraction of what they would in Europe.
Day 2 in Pretoria
The Union Buildings, and the two hills
The big day, and the one that makes sense of the city. Start on the terraces above the centre, then cross to the two hills that face each other south of it.
The Union Buildings were finished in 1913 by Herbert Baker, the architect the British Empire used for its important buildings, with two wings and a curved colonnade between them meant to stand for two white language groups reconciling. Mandela was inaugurated on the lawn below in 1994, in front of the largest gathering of heads of state the country had ever seen, and a nine metre bronze of him now stands there with his arms open.
Then the two monuments. Take them in this order, because the second was designed knowing the first was there.
- 09:00
The Union Buildings
ArchitectureYou cannot go inside, and you do not need to. The terraced gardens climb the hill in front of it, they are free and open all day, and the view over the city is the reason people come up here with sandwiches. Early morning light is best on the sandstone.
- 11:30
Voortrekker Monument and Fort Scanskop
HistoricA forty metre granite block on a hilltop, opened in 1949, commemorating the Afrikaners who trekked inland from the Cape in the 1830s. A frieze of marble panels runs round the hall inside and a shaft of sunlight falls on the cenotaph at midday every 16 December. Climb the dome stairs for the view.
- 13:30
Lunch between the hills
EatBoth monuments have restaurants with terraces and views, and both are better than they need to be. Whichever you are at when you get hungry is the right one.
- 14:30
//hapo Museum & Freedom Park
CultureOn the facing hill, and the answer to the one you have just left. The museum tells southern African history from the creation stories forwards, and outside a wall carries the names of the dead from the wars of resistance, the world wars and the liberation struggle. Go with a guide if one is going; the site is large and the layout is not obvious.
With more time: The two sites are ten minutes apart by car and about a kilometre apart as the crow flies, with a motorway in between. Standing on either one and looking at the other is the most useful five minutes of the day.
Day 3 in Pretoria
West to the dam and the Magaliesberg
An hour west, the Crocodile River is dammed where it cuts through the Magaliesberg, an old quartzite ridge that runs for a hundred and twenty kilometres and is one of the oldest mountain ranges on earth.
The dam has been Pretoria's weekend since the 1920s: a lake in a bowl of hills, with holiday houses, a wall you can walk out onto and a cable car to the ridge above.
It is a lazy day and it should be. Drive out mid morning, take the cableway before the wind gets up, and eat somewhere on the water afterwards.
- 10:30
Aerial Cableway Hartbeespoort
OtherTen minutes to the top of the Magaliesberg, where a walkway runs along the ridge and the whole dam lies below with the bushveld running north behind it. There is a restaurant at the bottom station and a viewing deck at the top. Windy afternoons close it, so go early.
- 13:00
Lunch on the water
EatThe lakeside strip is full of places with decks over the water, mostly grilled fish and steak, mostly aimed at people from the city on a Sunday. Pick one with shade.
- 15:00
Hartbeespoort Dam Wall
VisitA concrete arch wedged into the gorge, finished in the 1920s, with the river shooting out of a tunnel below it and back on its way north. You can walk the road across the top. Unglamorous, and the best twenty minutes at the dam.
- 16:45
Groenkloof Nature Reserve
OtherOn the southern edge of the city, on the way back in. Giraffe, zebra, blesbok and impala on marked trails that start eight kilometres from the parliament buildings, in what is claimed to be the second oldest nature reserve in the world. An hour is enough.
With more time: The lake is at its best on a weekday. On Sundays half of Pretoria drives out here and the road back into the city is solid from four o'clock.
Day 4 in Pretoria
A skull and a peace treaty
Two small museums a few streets apart, and both quick, which makes them the right last morning.
One holds Mrs Ples, the most complete Australopithecus africanus skull ever found, dug out of the Sterkfontein caves an hour west in 1947 and roughly two million years old. The other is a Victorian house where the war between the Boer republics and the British Empire was formally ended in 1902.
- 09:30
Ditsong National Museum of Natural History
CultureA proper old natural history museum, cheap, slightly faded, and holding one of the most important fossils ever found in Africa. Mrs Ples travels to exhibitions sometimes, so check she is home if that is what you came for. Also dinosaurs, minerals and a hall of stuffed mammals.
- 11:30
Melrose House Museum
HistoricA Victorian mansion of 1886 with the original furniture, used as British military headquarters during the occupation, and the room where the treaty ending the Anglo-Boer War was signed on the last day of May 1902. The garden is a good place to sit afterwards.
- 13:00
Lunch before the airport
EatAllow an hour and a half to O.R. Tambo, and more if you are driving into the Johannesburg afternoon rush.
With more time: The national zoo is a few streets north and is one of the largest in the world by area, with a cable car over the enclosures. Better than it sounds, and a good stop with children.
Before you go
Where to stay
Hatfield is the obvious base: the university quarter out to the east, with a Gautrain station, restaurants that stay open, and a short walk to the embassies. Brooklyn next door is quieter and more expensive.
Arcadia sits between Hatfield and the Union Buildings and has guesthouses in old houses with gardens, which is the pleasantest way to stay here. The city centre itself has hotels but empties after dark and is not where you want to be looking for dinner.
Rates are noticeably lower than Johannesburg or Cape Town, and Pretoria makes a perfectly good base for both the Gauteng cities if you would rather not move.
Getting here and getting around
The nearest airport is O.R. Tambo in Johannesburg, about an hour by road. The Gautrain runs from the airport to Pretoria in roughly forty minutes with one change at Marlboro, and is by far the easiest way in.
Within the city, use Uber and Bolt. Distances are short and fares are small. The centre is walkable by day and worth walking, since the old buildings are close together, but not after dark.
A car is only necessary for the day out at the dam. Hire it for that day rather than for the trip.
The jacarandas
Around seventy thousand jacaranda trees line the streets here, and for three or four weeks in late October they all flower at once and the whole city turns purple. It is the single best time to visit and hotel prices barely notice.
They are not native. They came from South America in the 1880s, they are classed as invasive, and no new ones may legally be planted, so the ones standing are the ones there will be. Students have a superstition that a flower falling on your head means you will pass your exams.
Practicalities
Most museums here are cheap, sometimes startlingly so, and several close at 16:00 and all day on public holidays. Check before making a plan around one.
Pretoria is calmer than Johannesburg and the ordinary South African precautions still apply: nothing visible in a parked car, no walking in the centre after dark, and take a car rather than walk between neighbourhoods at night.
Pretoria is a working town rather than a destination, and it is better for it. The museums are cheap, the restaurants are full of people who live here, and nothing has been arranged for visitors.
What stays with you is the geography of the argument: a Boer president's veranda, a courtroom, and two monuments on two hills, each built to say something the other one denies. No other capital lays its history out quite that plainly.
Make it your trip
Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.
Common questions
- Is Pretoria worth visiting, or just a day trip from Johannesburg?
- It works as a day trip if all you want is the Union Buildings and one monument. Three nights lets you do the two monuments properly on separate halves of a day, get out to the dam, and see the old centre on foot, which the day trip version never manages.
- When should I go?
- Late October, for the jacarandas. Otherwise April to September is dry, sunny and cold at night, and October to March brings heavy afternoon thunderstorms that clear quickly.
- Can I stay in Pretoria and visit Johannesburg?
- Yes, and it is cheaper. The Gautrain connects the two in about forty minutes and runs from early morning to late evening on weekdays, less often at weekends.
- Do I need a car?
- Only for the day at the dam. Everything else is a short Uber ride, and the old centre is best walked.
- Which is the real capital of South Africa?
- All three, officially. The president and the departments of state are in Pretoria, parliament sits in Cape Town, and the Supreme Court of Appeal is in Bloemfontein. The arrangement dates from the 1910 union and nobody has managed to change it since.