Iziko South African Museum
The country's oldest museum, holding a whale well, fossil reptiles and a rock art gallery that replaced a notorious display.
Updated 22 October 2026
Founded in 1825, this is the oldest museum in South Africa, sitting at the top of the Company's Garden. Its collections run from Karoo fossils - the mammal-like reptiles that make South Africa central to understanding the origin of mammals - through natural history to the whale well, a double-height hall hung with whale skeletons that generations of Cape Town schoolchildren remember. The rock art gallery holds original engraved and painted panels with serious interpretation. The museum also carries a difficult history it now confronts directly: for decades it displayed casts of Khoisan people made in the early twentieth century, taken in ways that were unethical at the time and worse in retrospect; the diorama was closed in 2001 after long campaigning and the museum has since worked on how to address that record rather than quietly file it. The planetarium next door was upgraded to digital in 2017.
History
Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape Colony, founded the museum in 1825, the first in the country, and it has stood on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The marine biologist Frank Talbot worked here from 1958, and the museum took its present name in 2012; iziko is a Xhosa word meaning hearth (Wikipedia, Iziko South African Museum).
The main sights
- The whale well - a double-height hall hung with whale skeletons.
- The Karoo fossils - mammal-like reptiles central to the story of mammal origins.
- The rock art gallery - original panels with substantial interpretation.
- The closed diorama - a notorious display of Khoisan casts, shut in 2001 and now addressed directly.
When to go
All year. Two to three hours. Weekday mornings are quietest.
Before you go
Parts of the building are dated and some displays have not been refreshed in years. The planetarium is a separate ticket. The museum's colonial-era collecting history is uncomfortable and it is now discussed openly rather than hidden.
Nearby
Company's Garden surrounds it; the National Gallery is a short walk.
Key facts
Source: Wikidata, item Q6102031, read on 18 October 2026.
What to pack for Iziko South African Museum
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