Celebrate Heritage week with free entrance to Iziko Museums

Posted by Kerry Peers on 21 September 2012

in_herit the city festival

South Africa has a diverse, rich cultural heritage. Heritage Day is set aside for us to appreciate and celebrate this heritage. Iziko is giving Cape Town a chance to explore their range of museums on Heritage Day, Monday 24 September, by offering free entrance to all the museums for the entire day.

Learn more about the spectrum of Iziko Museums around Cape Town:

Bertram House

Built c. 1839, this house is the only remaining example of the English Georgian-style red brick houses that were once common in Cape Town.

Bo-Kaap Museum

Situated amongst the brightly coloured houses of the Bo-Kaap, the museum showcases local Islamic culture and heritage.

Groot Constantia Manor House

Groot Constantia is one of the oldest wine farms in South Africa. The Manor House, with its exhibition of furniture, paintings, textiles, ceramics, brass, and copperware, provides an insight into the life of a successful 18th to late 19th century Cape farmer.

Koopmans-de wet House

This house museum is furnished as a home for a well-to-do Cape family during the late 18th Century. It houses some of the best pieces of Cape furniture and silver in the country, in addition to a priceless collection of ceramics.

Maritime Centre

Learn about the history of shipping in Cape Town and view the earliest existing model of Table Bay harbour, completed in 1885 by prisoners and warders of Breakwater Prison. Images depicting Table Bay from the 17th to 20th Century give an idea of the development of the harbour.

Michaelis collection at the old town house

Situated in the hub of Cape Town on Greenmarket Square, the Michaelis Collection is housed in the former City Hall (the Old Town House), which was built in 1755 in the Cape Rococo style. The Michaelis collection consists of a world-renowned selection of Netherlandish art from the seventeenth-century Golden Age. There are works by Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael, Anthony van Dyck and numerous others.

Planetarium

The Planetarium, which is housed in the South African Museum building in Cape Town, is a celestial theatre in the round, utilising the complex Minolta star machine and multiple projectors to transport the audience through the wonders of the universe. The ultimate in armchair travel.

Rust en Vreugd

Rust en Vreugd was built as a home for Willem Cornelis Boers, a high-ranking official of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) known as a fiscal, around 1777–1778.

SAS Somerset

Unfortunately this display of the last surviving Boom Defence Vessel at the V&A Waterfront, is not currently open to the public.

Slave Lodge

The Slave Lodge is one of the oldest buildings in Cape Town. The many names of the building over three centuries – Slave Lodge, Government Offices Building, Old Supreme Court, and SA Cultural History Museum – reflect the long and rich history of the building. In 1998 this museum was renamed the Slave Lodge. Under the umbrella theme, ‘From human wrongs to human rights’, exhibitions on the lower level of this museum explore the long history of slavery in South Africa. Issues of human rights are addressed in changing, temporary exhibitions.

Social History Centre

The collections housed in this museum include indigenous cultural material from southern Africa, artefacts from the colonial period of the Cape, including maritime and historical archaeology, as well as collections of world ceramics, furniture, coins and textiles, among others.

South African Museum

The South African Museum houses more than one and a half million specimens of scientific importance. The collections now range from fossils almost 700-million years old to insects and fish caught last week. There are also stone tools made by people 120 000 years ago and traditional clothes from the last century. The South African Museum was founded in 1825. In 1897 the Museum moved to its present building in the historic Company’s Garden. Since then millions of visitors have wandered its halls and corridors to be stimulated and inspired by its collections and exhibitions. They have left the Museum with a better understanding of the earth and its biological and cultural diversity, past and present.

South African National Gallery

South Africa’s premier art museum houses outstanding collections of South African, African, British, French, Dutch and Flemish art. Selections from the Permanent Collection change regularly to enable the museum to have a full programme of temporary exhibitions of paintings, works on paper, photography, sculpture, beadwork, textiles and architecture.

William Fehr Collection at the Castle of Good Hope

Fine and interesting examples of paintings and decorative arts of special relevance to the Cape are to be found in the William Fehr Collection. Contained in the collection is a wealth of historical information concerning the peoples and landscapes of early colonial South Africa. It is one of the most important public collections of artefacts of the period.

While you won’t be able to fit in all the museums in one day, they are all worth a visit to gain insight on our county’s heritage. Make space in your diary to visit these museums throughout the rest of the year (entrance fees to each place are inexpensive at R25 or less).

For a detailed programme of Heritage Week events, visit www.iziko.org.za. For booking and enquiries contact Pamela Court on 021-481-3804/13 or email [email protected]

For more ideas on what to do on Heritage Day, take a look at 10 things to do over the Heritage Day long weekend.