Where to Stay in Welkom, Free State

What is Welkom known for?

Welkom is the second-largest city of the Free State, built on the gold fields, and its ring of traffic circles earned it the name Circle City. Gardens explain the second nickname. City Within A Garden is the other label the place answers to, alongside Mvela and the Sesotho name Matjhabeng, which means where nations meet and records the workers from Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique who came to the mines.

Four names, one city.

What are the main landmarks in Welkom?

A city laid out over gold in 1947 has no monument on its register. The traffic circles that gave the city the name Circle City are what a visitor notices first, and the planting that produced City Within A Garden is what holds the streets together between them. The gold fields lie underneath.

Mining works stand around the built-up area, and the Sesotho name Matjhabeng carries more of the city's meaning than any single building in it.

What is the history of Welkom?

Welkom dates from 1947. Gold under the Free State brought the city into existence, and unlike the older towns of South Africa it was planned from the start, with traffic circles instead of intersections and planting written into the layout. Both choices stuck as names.

Circle City and City Within A Garden have followed Welkom ever since, and Mvela belongs to the same set of names. The mines set the pace of everything. Labour came from far away.

The migrant labour system that supplied the gold fields drew workers from Lesotho, Malawi and Mozambique as well as from across South Africa, and the Sesotho name Matjhabeng records exactly that, meaning where nations meet. Welkom grew on that traffic. It became the second-largest city of the Free State, a long drive northeast of Bloemfontein, and the mining economy shaped what was built and where.

The circles remain the plan. Nothing in Welkom is older than the gold, which makes it a young city by the standards of South Africa and gives its streets a uniformity the older Free State towns never had.

Where is Welkom?

The gold fields came first. Welkom sits inland in the Free State of South Africa, a drive northeast of Bloemfontein, the provincial capital, with the gold fields underneath it. The city was drawn, not grown.

Its plan turns on traffic circles rather than a main square, which is why Circle City stuck, and planting through the built-up area gave rise to the second name, City Within A Garden. Mines gave the city its reason.

What is the climate of Welkom?

The interior runs the weather. Welkom lies far from any coast, deep in the Free State, so the summer half of the southern year runs hot and the winter half runs dry, with nothing coastal to soften either end. Cover from the sun counts.

Planting across the built-up area is what earned Welkom the name City Within A Garden, and the trees are the only thing standing between the streets and the open Free State sun.

How do you get to Welkom?

Bloemfontein is the reference point. The provincial capital lies a long drive southwest, and the road up from it is the usual approach to Welkom for anyone coming into the Free State from that side. Driving is the way in.

The gold fields sit inland from the coastal corridors of South Africa, so every arrival is overland, and the traffic circles take over as soon as the built-up area starts. Matjhabeng names the same place.