South African Museum, Cape Town

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I do enjoy visiting history museums when traveling abroad. You get a sense of where the culture comes from, how they have evolved as a country and appreciate the preservation of that history. The South African Museum was very enlightening offering exhibits from the past and present. We enjoyed it and highly recommend the visit.

The South African Museum is a window on the world of natural history, showcasing the bounty of nature, both present and past. Exhibitions and dioramas display hundreds of different species – inhabitants of land, sea or air – enabling visitors to view, under a single roof, creatures as diverse as dinosaurs, mammals, coelacanths, bats or even the fossilized remains of species from 250 million years ago. In the popular Discovery Room, children can discover nature by touch, feel and interaction.

This was by far the most interesting room for me. Skeletons, models, bones which you can walk in amongst, pictures and displays, but the most haunting part was the whale noise which is played out on loud speakers. Magical!

The museum has some startingly lifelike displays of San Bushmen communities, which were made from casts taken from live people in 1911. Dioramas show the way of life of the bushmen and traces their history.

A really fascinating museum, and said to be the most interesting in South Africa. It is certainly the oldest and largest natural history museum in the country, dating from 1825. It is open from 10.00 to 17.00. Admission is free on Wednesdays.

A fanastic exhibition on the different cultures in South Africa, with info on diff rocks found here and many animals.

Entrance with planetarium
R20 per adult

There are cases and cases of stuffed animals, such as these rockhopper penguins. Not all of the displays are indigenous (including the penguins).

San rock art dates back over 20,000 years, and the Linton panel is a well preserved example of what has been interpreted as trance experiments.