Johannesburg
A city that sprang up on a gold reef in 1886 and had a hundred thousand people ten years later
- When to go
- September 17° · 3 rainy days
- Per day
- €€price 2 of 5
- How many days
- 2days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 21 km O. R. Tambo · 32 km Lanseria
- Right now
For most travellers Johannesburg is a connection on the way to Kruger or Cape Town, and two days here explain the country they go on to see. Day one is the Apartheid Museum, then Soweto, in that order; day two is Constitution Hill and Pretoria.
There was no city here until 1886. When the main gold reef of the Witwatersrand was found on Langlaagte farm, a settlement of a hundred thousand people appeared on the empty highveld within ten years. It grew around the mines, and it is still spread out: the Apartheid Museum is in the south, by Gold Reef City, Soweto in the south-west, and Sandton in the north.
Visitors use one train here, the Gautrain: fifteen minutes from OR Tambo airport to Sandton, thirty-five from Park station to Pretoria. Everything else is a ride app or a guided tour. British travel advice says not to walk to or from Gautrain stations after dark, and that thieves smash the windows of cars waiting at junctions, so bags and phones in the car stay out of sight.
Guides for Johannesburg
Shorter, practical pages for one concrete question each — how many days, how much money, where to sleep, where to escape the city.
Johannesburg in 2 days
→Two days most people skip — and without them the rest of South Africa stays a postcard with no writing on the back.
What to see in Johannesburg
The Apartheid Museum
Your ticket classifies you at random as ‘white’ or ‘non-white’ and sends you to the matching entrance, and that single move explains the system before the first panel. The museum suggests at least two hours, does not recommend it for children under eleven, and is closed on Mondays. An international ticket is €13, audio tour included.
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Soweto
The former South Western Townships, home to 1.27 million people at the 2011 census. Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world with the homes of two Nobel laureates, Mandela and Tutu. The Hector Pieterson Museum in Orlando West is named after the boy killed when police opened fire on marching students on 16 June 1976. Go with a local guide, on foot or by bike.
Constitution Hill
A former prison that held Gandhi in 1906 and Mandela in 1962, before the Rivonia Trial. The Constitutional Court, sitting here since 2004, is built from the bricks of the demolished awaiting-trial wing of the old Number Four prison. The building is open to the public: hearings, and the art collection in the atrium.
Maboneng
A regenerated slice of the inner city around Arts on Main, at 264 Fox Street, where the Market on Main runs on Sundays from 10 to 3. You arrive and leave by ride app rather than walking through the streets around it.
The Cradle of Humankind and Sterkfontein
About fifty kilometres north-west, on the UNESCO list since 1999. The Sterkfontein caves produced Little Foot, the most complete Australopithecus skeleton known. After flood damage they were shut for more than two years; since April 2025 they are open again, guided only, Tuesday to Sunday, with a tour every hour from 9 to 3.
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Pretoria
The seat of government, the Union Buildings, has terraced gardens planted only with native species and a nine-metre bronze Mandela, unveiled on 16 December 2013. In October the jacarandas turn the city purple.
Two things you probably did not know
Johannesburg began in 1886 after gold was found and grew to a hundred thousand people in ten years. It is the largest city in the world that sits on no river, lake or coast. It exists only because of the ore beneath it.
Fifty kilometres from the city lies the Cradle of Humankind, where around forty per cent of all known human ancestor fossils have been found. Little Foot is among them, an almost complete skeleton over three million years old.
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Within reach from here: Kruger, Fish River Canyon and Windhoek
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