Bo-Kaap

About this audio guide

This guide to Bo-Kaap in Cape Town follows Tuan Guru, an exiled Tidore prince imprisoned by the Dutch East India Company on Robben Island in 1780, who reconstructed the Quran from memory by candlelight. Freed in 1792, he settled at the foot of Signal Hill and opened a school on Dorp Street that two years later grew into the Auwal Mosque, South Africa's first. His grave later joined a local legend about a ring of sacred tombs said to encircle and shield the whole Cape Peninsula. Listen for the call to prayer as it drifts down over these cobbled, colour-washed streets.