Robben Island Museum

This guide to Robben Island Museum in Cape Town follows Nelson Mandela and hundreds of other men sent to break limestone in the prison quarry from 1964 onward, digging rock nobody needed under a glare so harsh it damaged their eyesight. It traces how the men turned the quarry's shade into a place to argue philosophy and teach each other to read, and how a hidden cave became the nearest thing to a free room on the island. Many of today's guides through the cell blocks were once prisoners here themselves.