The Star of South Africa - A Heritage Walking Tour through the Castle of Good Hope

There is no building in South African history - perhaps any nation's history - more powerfully symbolic or more painfully contested than the Castle of Good Hope.

With the recent evictions at the Strand Street bastion, the colonial fortress has found itself back in the news cycle as both an icon of our Republic's urban decay and a cruel remnant of the displacement and destruction of indigenous life that lasted for more than 300 years after its first stone was laid (and which we thought had abated for a change).

Voices rose to recognise the exalted heritage of the site to the South African Saga while counter-voices rightfully declaimed it as the Kremlin of white minority rule, a mocking mausoleum for a slowburn genocide. But what do you know about it? How often have you been inside? Have you had the chance yet to explore its strangest chambers?

Over 100,000 local schoolkids, along with bevies of business conferences, Indonesian consuls, Netflix film crews, platteland Afrikaners and nerdy Nederlanders visit it every year but it is almost utterly ignored by Capetonians themselves, who stand to learn and feel the most from visiting.

As such I want to invite you to be brave and curious enough to join me for a thorough wander and delve into a city within the city.

It will be impossible for me to pussyfoot around anything. Just as Cape Town is the world in one city, the Castle is the nucleus of South Africa. In minutes you can walk from art galleries to torture chambers, rococo fountains to venemous arsenals, glinting silver dining halls to bronze statues of imprisoned chiefs.

Like Robben Island, it is an international monument to a dead empire and a tourist site whose resonances are still far from being fully heard.

By the end of the tour I hope you'll agree that if the Castle can be reclaimed for ordinary South Africans, surely the rest of the country will follow...

As always, we can't wait to blow your minds x

Yours,

Cameron of CTHT

“Our guide, Cameron, was outstanding. He has that rare ability to take a historic site and make it feel vivid and modern. The way he explained the Castle’s history gave it real colour and depth, blending major events with the kind of human detail that makes stories stay with you. It was engaging, thought-provoking, and very well delivered. Highly recommend”

- Mitchell B.

P.S. If you've read this far I'm guessing you'll want even more of the specs, so here goes:

- We'll be starting by the Leeuhek ('Lion Gate') entrance to the Castle at 14h00 and finishing on the ramparts beside the bell-tower two hours later, so I'd advise parking by the public lot on Darling Street.

- We've just put up our ticket prices for the first time in two-and-a-half years, from R150pp to R200pp (including entrance fee to the Castle itself). Obviously this is just to keep with inflation and to allow the tours to remain a sustainable enterprise for the foreseeable future, but this is still about R50 less per person than our nearest competition. In other words, we are deliberately undercharging the tours so as to keep them affordable for locals and visitors alike and to encourage guests to come back weekend after weekend.

- Book via Quicket, WhatsApp us on 076 033 8164, E-mail us on [email protected] or Message us via the buttons on our home page to secure your place.

- We have also just introduced a broad scheme of discounts you can apply for on each tour, so please do consult the list below before contacting us!

- And we've decided to partner with a different local NGO or charity for each and every one of our tour routes so that R10 of every ticket purchased goes directly to a good, sustainable, local cause. For the Castle tour, we've chosen to fund-raise for the Cape Town Heritage Foundation, and you can inspect their brilliance here:

https://www.cthf.co.za

- This is a consistently well-reviewed heritage-focused walking tour; which is to say that all you'll need to enjoy yourself is curiosity about Cape Town's past (and History in general) and enough stamina to walk just less than 3km in one afternoon (with stops and snacks).

- If you're rejoining us, please please please please please please consider dropping us a short (or extensive) review on our Facebook Reviews or Google Reviews section as it will help spread our gospel of curiosity and playful appreciation across the internet and across the spectrum of all potential visitors to the Cape. It helps us more than you can believe!

- You can also add an optional R10 donation on your ticket which will go directly to the NGO Streetscapes as part of our mission to spread love, enthusiasm, mutual support and respect for all of Cape Town's people and histories. Just think how many people we could help and the difference we could make with a few hundred tours!

- Feel absolutely free to spread the word, invite friends who've been looking for this kind of experience and badger us with every imaginable heritage query. We live for it!

Can't wait to meet ya, really!

THE CTHT DISCOUNT LIST:

1. Guests over 65 and under 18 can claim a 33% discount on each ticket, at R133pp pre-booked.

2. If you buy tickets for both the Saturday and Sunday tours on one weekend, you can claim R50 off each ticket, at R250pp pre-booked.

3. If you buy a Cape Town Heritage Tours Tote-Bag or any of our books on sale at our Half-Booked Online Shop, you can claim a free tour voucher for each piece of merchandise.

4. You can buy individual advance vouchers for our public tours at R150 each and then message in the week before a scheduled tour. But you can also buy value-packs of five for the price of 4 (R600), 10 for the price of 7 (R1050) or all 18 for the price of 10 (R1500).

5. If you bring 2 or more friends on a weekend tour you can claim R30 back on each of your tickets, at R120pp pre-booked.

6. If you share the posts promoting individual tours you can claim R30 back as well, at R170pp.

7. If you review the tours on Google Reviews, Facebook or TripAdvisor (at any rating) you can claim 50% off your next ticket, at R100pp pre-booked.

8. Likewise if you recommend the tours to a friend who then attends a weekend tour, you can claim 50% off your next ticket, at R100pp pre-booked.

See ya next weekend!