Pretoria Attractions

Although Pretoria is so close to Johannesburg, the two cities could scarcely be more different. Pretoria, with the largest area of any South African town, is a city of civil servants and diplomats, trim residential districts and beautiful parks and gardens. It is also an important industrial town (iron and steel, automobile manufacture, cement production) and an educational and cultural center. The University of Pretoria was founded in 1930; and UNISA, the University of South Africa, is one of the largest open universities in the world, with over 100,000 students.

The area round Pretoria was originally occupied by the Ndebele, whose women are famed for their skill in decorating the façades of their houses. The first voortrekkers arrived in the area, then sparsely populated, in 1827. Pretoria was founded in 1855 by the Boer general Marthinus Wessel Pretorius and named after his father Andries Pretorius, whose victory in the battle of Blood River had made possible the establishment of an independent white settlement in the Transvaal. In 1860 Pretoria became capital of the Transvaal and in 1910 the seat of government of the Union of South Africa.

This beautiful, sunny and colorful garden city with a tranquil air has numerous historic buildings, museums and well kept parks and gardens. It is at its most beautiful in October when its thousands of mauve-flowered jacaranda trees are in bloom.

It is not difficult to find your way about the city, which is laid out on a regular grid, but visitors doing their sightseeing on foot will discover that even within the city center the distances to be covered are quite considerable.