Pretoria is a major South African city situated just over fifty kilometres north of Johannesburg. Pretoria (recently renamed Tshwane) is the administrative capital of South Africa. It is home to the Union Buildings (the seat of Government) a beautiful building designed by Sir Herbert Baker, the Presidential Guesthouse and many major government department offices. The iconic Mandela Statue towers over the Union Buildings Amphitheatre and has become a major tourist attraction. The largest diamond ever was found in Cullinan nearby Pretoria, while the city's Innovation Hub is Africa's first internationally accredited science park.
It is also the city with the most embassies and diplomatic missions in South Africa, so besides being full of civil servants it also is home to many diplomats, their staff and families. It is where people wanting visas and other travel documents are often required to head for.
Pretoria is a beautiful city and is popularly known as the “Jacaranda City” due to the thousands of Jacaranda trees planted along the city’s streets and burst into purple flowers once a year, in spring. Despite its size it has the feel of a small town with lots of parks, green areas, nature reserves and the Pretoria Zoo and National Botanical Gardens.
Pretoria is blessed with a large and varied range of wonderful restaurants and if this is your thing then make sure you take the time to visit some of these establishments and enjoy their fare. There are also many modern, glitzy shopping malls offering every kind of shop that you can imagine, but if that is not your thing, then look for places off the beaten track where you can find arts and crafts, curios, antiques and all sorts of other bric a brac.
Being on the Highveld, the city has a very similar climate to Johannesburg - dry winters with warm, sunny days and cool to cold nights. In summer the weather is wonderful - warm to hot with the regular possibility of an afternoon thunderstorm or two to cool things down and possibly offer a pyrotechnic thunder and lightning display too.
- Union Buildings
- Mandela Statue
- Voortrekker Monument
- Pretoria National Botanical Garden
- Church Square
- National Zoological Gardens of South Africa
- take in a rugby or soccer match at Loftus Versveld stadium
- dine at one of Pretoria's many highly regarded restaurants
- Freedom Park
- Pretoria Art Museum
Pretoria is named after the Voortrekker leader Andries Pretorius - it was founded in 1855 by Marthinus Pretorius and named after his father who was a Voortrekker hero after his victory over Dingaan at the Battle of Blood River. The elder Pretorius also negotiated the Sand River Convention in 1852, in which Britain acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal Republic. It became the capital of the South African Republic on 1 May 1860. The founding of Pretoria as the capital of the South African Republic can be seen as marking the end of the Boers' settlement movements of the Great Trek.
During the First Boer War, the city was besieged by Republican forces in December 1880 and March 1881. The peace treaty which ended the war was signed in Pretoria on 3 August 1881 at the Pretoria Convention. The Second Boer War resulted in the end of the Transvaal Republic and start of British hegemony in South Africa. The city surrendered to the British forces under Frederick Roberts on 5 June 1900 and the conflict was ended in Pretoria with the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902.
The country’s journey from a colonial territory, to apartheid state and eventually the democratic darling of the world in the 1990’s can be mapped throughout the city.
Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first democratically elected president at the Union Buildings in 1994. It was also at this amphitheatre that Mandela’s body laid in state when he passed away in 2013. A nine metre tall bronze statue of this revered statesman was unveiled at the Union Buildings in 2014.
