Description

Essentials about the Iziko South African Museum in brief

The Iziko South African Museum is one of the largest and most important museums of natural history, archaeology and anthropology in all of Africa. Its collections number more than 1.5 million objects from the entire history of the earth – from 700 million-year-old fossils to freshly caught fish and from 120,000-year-old tools to T-shirts printed yesterday.

The exhibitions at the Iziko South African Museum

The museum would be founded in 1825 and has been at its current location at Company’s Garden in the center of Cape Town since 1897. On the first floor exhibits on indigenous Africans, fossils and creatures from the waters around South Africa (including a giant whale skeleton) are located.

On the second floor, visitors can learn in detail about sharks, rays and other fascinating sea creatures. The museum’s planetarium gives great audio-visual impressions of outer space, and in other exhibits visitors can learn about meteorites and man’s place in the universe.

The second floor belongs to mammals and birds, mainly of South African origin. There is also an exhibition area on how the indigenous Africans used the country’s natural resources, a bat exhibition and a geological model of Table Mountain. And on the third floor, visitors can view reconstructions of the 250-million-year-old therapsids from the South African Karoo.

Website

iziko.org.za/museums/south-african-museum

Opening hours

Admission fees

Adults: R30

Children (Ages 6 – 17): R15

Small children (Ages 5 and under): free

Concessions: R15

Family ticket (2 adults and 2 children): R75

Address

Getting there

By public transport:

Bus line 101: Stop Michaelis

By car:

There are a number of parking lots in the immediate vicinity of the museum.