Where to Stay in Johannesburg, Gauteng

What is Johannesburg known for?

The city sprang up in 1886 when gold was found on the Witwatersrand, and it grew into the financial capital of South Africa, holding the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the country's mining houses. It also carries real political weight as the seat of the Constitutional Court. In its clubs and taxis, Amapiano and house music set the beat.

Locals call it Jozi.

What are the main landmarks in Johannesburg?

Johannesburg keeps its landmarks close to its history. The Johannesburg Art Gallery and MuseuMAfricA anchor the inner-city museum scene, while the Origins Centre and the Wits Art Museum trace human beginnings and modern art at the university. Constitution and memory sit side by side.

The Constitutional Court, the Flame of Democracy, and the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre mark the country's harder passages, and the Turffontein Racecourse adds a sporting note.

What is the history of Johannesburg?

Johannesburg began with a single discovery. In 1886 gold was found on the Witwatersrand, the reef of gold-bearing rock beneath the site, and within a few years a mining camp on the open ground had swelled into a raw, fast-growing town. Prospectors, financiers, and labourers converged from across the region and the world to work the deep-level mines.

The gold made fortunes and built the earliest banks, headgear, and grid of streets. People soon called it the City of Gold, or Jozi. The mines shaped everything that followed, including its divisions.

Black mineworkers were housed apart and moved under tight control, and whole communities such as Fietas were later uprooted, a history the Fietas Museum keeps in view. After the political changes of the early nineties, Johannesburg took a central place in the new order, and the Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, was seated here. The old mining core around Marshalltown shifted in character as business drifted to newer districts elsewhere.

Through it all the city kept remaking itself. Its story is still written in gold, migration, and reinvention.

Where is Johannesburg?

Johannesburg stands on the Witwatersrand in the province of Gauteng. The city grew along the gold reef, a band of high ground deep in the interior of South Africa, well away from any coastline. Pretoria lies a short way off, the two cities almost meeting across Gauteng. Gold, not water, fixed its place.

What is the climate of Johannesburg?

Johannesburg sits in the subtropical band of the southern hemisphere, yet its weather stays milder than that position suggests. Summers bring the rain. Around the turn of the year, warm days end in sharp afternoon thunderstorms, while the midyear winter runs dry, bright, and cool.

Winters on the Witwatersrand stay crisp and sunlit.

How do you get to Johannesburg?

Johannesburg is the main way into South Africa by air. The country's busiest international airport lies just outside the city, and from it highways and rail lines fan out to Pretoria, the rest of Gauteng, and the coast beyond. Long-distance trains and coaches terminate in the centre.

The two Gauteng cities sit within an easy drive of each other. Most visitors arrive here first.