Market
Greenmarket Square
Cobbled colonial-era plaza ringed by Cape Dutch buildings, now a bustling open-air craft market.
0:00≈ 2 min
Location
0:00≈ 2 min
About this audio guide
This guide to Greenmarket Square in Cape Town starts with a disagreement: historians can't agree whether a burgher watch house first stood here in 1696 or two decades later. It traces the square's life as a produce market and a place where enslaved people were bought and sold, and the grand double-storeyed building that replaced the old watch house, its foundation laid in 1755 under governor Rijk Tulbagh. A sculptor named Johannes Struwigh was paid in 1772 to carve the ornamental work on its facade.
This audio guide was created using AI.