Johannesburg Experience

The Apartheid Museum illustrates what life was like for South Africans under the apartheid system through dramatic photographs, videos, press clips, personal artefacts and moving anecdotes. The museum is situated at the Gold Reef City campus in Ormonde where it opened its doors in 2001.

Gandhi Square, named for the Indian leader and human rights activist, is located in Johannesburg’s central business district.Today the main focal point of this busy square is the unique 2.5m statue of Gandhi dressed in the robes of an attorney and it is also among the top Johannesburg attractions. While Gandhi was living in Johannesburg worked as a lawyer, and the site of the present square was also the location for city’s first court building, where the young Gandhi often made appearances.

If you want a bird’s-eye view of Johannesburg, the 50-storey Carlton Centre is the place to go. Visitors to the centre can enjoy a panoramic view of the City of Gold from the Top of Africa, as the topmost floor of the building is known: 360 degrees of dense cityscape and outwards towards the countryside and beyond. The tallest building in Africa and once the tallest building in the southern hemisphere, the Carlton Centre stands 223m high – about 40m shy of featuring on the world’s top 100 skyscrapers list.

Constitution Hill is a living museum that tells the story of South Africa’s journey to democracy. The site is a former prison and military fort that bears testament to South Africa’s turbulent past and, today, is home to the country’s Constitutional Court, which endorses the rights of all citizens. There is perhaps no other site of incarceration in South Africa that imprisoned the sheer number of world-renowned men and women as those held within the walls of Constitution Hill.