Cape Town

Few cities make a first impression like Cape Town. Jan van Riebeeck and the Dutch East India Company landed here in 1652 to provision ships bound for the East, and the refreshment station they planted grew into South Africa's oldest city — today its legislative capital, and a port where Khoisan herders, Dutch and British colonists, people enslaved from Asia and Africa, and the leaders of the anti-apartheid struggle have all left their mark. Looming over everything is Table Mountain, a flat-topped wall of sandstone rising more than 1,000 metres almost straight out of the streets. It is a city that rewards curiosity about the story behind the view — and with a self-guided audio guide playing as you go, each landmark tells that story in your ear, at your own pace.

Start at the top. The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway has been hauling visitors skyward since 1929, and its Rotair cars now rotate a full 360° on the short ride to the 1,067-metre upper station — the whole peninsula unrolls beneath you. From the V&A Waterfront, ferries cross six kilometres of cold Atlantic to Robben Island, the UNESCO-listed prison island where Nelson Mandela was held; former political prisoners lead the tours, and an audio guide sets the island's 500-year history in context before you even board. Back in town, the cobbled lanes and candy-coloured houses of Bo-Kaap carry the Cape Malay community's heritage, while the District Six Museum remembers the more than 60,000 residents forcibly removed from their neighbourhood under apartheid — places where a narrated walk turns pretty streets into living history.

Beyond the city bowl, the Cape Peninsula runs some 52 kilometres south through scenery that barely seems real: the cliff-hugging curves of Chapman's Peak, the African penguin colony waddling across Boulders Beach near Simon's Town, and finally the lighthouse-topped headlands of Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope. On the mountain's eastern slopes, Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden — celebrated as one of the great botanic gardens of the world — shows off the fynbos of the Cape Floristic Region from a tree-canopy walkway that snakes above the treetops.

Cape Town compresses an improbable amount into one peninsula: beaches and vineyards, a sunrise hike up Lion's Head, world-class food, and some of the most consequential history of the twentieth century. Wander with the audio guides queued up, and the Mother City explains itself as you walk — one mountain, one island, one street at a time.