Johannesburg

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Egoli, the Zulu name for 'place of gold' is a city founded on mining. Even now, Johannesburg is still the financial capital of South Africa as well as a rapidly growing vibrant, metropolis larger than London or New York, rich in its African and European history.

Johannesburg, or Jo’burg as it is more affectionately known as, is the largest city in South Africa and the provincial capital of Gauteng. It was founded in 1886 when prospectors found gold in the area then known as Witwatersrand. As thousands flocked to the Langlaagte farm in the savanna, the Boers, Dutch farmers, set up a township and named it after two officials of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek (ZAR); Johannes Meyer and Johannes Rissik. The government changed hands in 1900 when the British captured the city during the Second Boer War, enfolding it into the British Commonwealth.

A city of controversial background, it now works hard to rise above its sordid past when native tribesmen were forced to work in the gold mine and apartheid separated people by color. Today it is a dynamic and multicultural city of four million people. It is also a very green city despite its savanna setting. With around 6 million trees, Johannesburg is probably the world’s largest man-made urban forest.

For a city barely a hundred years old, it’s rich in history and hosts many exciting historical sights to visit. The Maropeng Visitors Center teaches about the Cradle of Human Kind taking visitors on an interactive journey through the evolution of life and human history. For more recent history, the Apartheid Museum tells the story of the rise and fall of South Africa’s era of segregation. In addition to which, inspiring Constitution Hill houses the Constitutional Court, built within the ramparts of the Old Fort, which dates from 1892 and was once a notorious prison that held many of the country’s high-profile political activists, including Nelson Mandela and Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi.

Shifting from history to art, Johannesburg Art Gallery houses the largest art collection in Africa. Among the collection are spectacular landscape and figurative paintings from the 17th and 18th Europe, as well as works by leading South Africa artists and traditional African objects. In a gentrified corner of the city, Joziburg Lane occupies the ground floor of One Eloff, a magnificent art deco building which houses artist’s studios and hip restaurants and shops. Many more areas of the city are enjoying an urban renaissance like hipster-friendly Maboneng with its Work and Art Building as well as Bioscope, South Africa’s only independent cinema. Today’s modern city is more than a jumping off place before traversing the safari rich Kruger National Park, it’s a place to stay awhile and explore the past and present of the largest city in South Africa.