South Africa · Western Cape · Cape Town
Muizenberg, Cape Town — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Muizenberg is a beachside suburb on the eastern edge of the Cape Peninsula, facing the warmer water of False Bay. The beach is wide and gently shelving. Its colourful Victorian bathing boxes and the surf breaks at Surfers' Corner have made it Cape Town's best-known swimming beach.
About Muizenberg
Where to stay in Muizenberg
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Staying in Muizenberg puts you a short walk from the surf and the warm water of False Bay, well away from the busier Atlantic Seaboard. Beds are mostly guesthouses, small B&Bs and self-catering flats rather than large hotels, so book ahead in the summer season. The pace here is unhurried.
It suits surfers, families and beach walkers who want the historic Rhodes Cottage and the seafront on their doorstep rather than late nightlife. For a wider choice of hotels and evening options, the Cape Town City Bowl lies about half an hour away by road or train.
About Muizenberg
What are the main landmarks in Muizenberg?
The painted Victorian bathing boxes are the picture most people take home. Beyond them the beach flattens into the gentle break at Surfers' Corner, the wave that made Muizenberg the birthplace of surfing in South Africa and still fills the water on weekends. Along Main Road, the Historic Mile keeps its Edwardian and Art Nouveau seafront frontages.
Rhodes Cottage, where Cecil Rhodes died in 1902, stands close by as a small museum.
What is the history of Muizenberg?
Muizenberg takes its name from Wynand Willem Muys, a sergeant who manned a military post above the shore in the 1740s. In 1795 the beach became a battlefield, when British forces defeated the Dutch East India Company garrison here. The Cape changed hands.
A century later the suburb had grown into a fashionable bathing resort, and mining magnates built holiday cottages along the seafront strip nicknamed Millionaires' Mile. Cecil Rhodes was among them, and he died in his Muizenberg cottage in 1902.
Where is Muizenberg?
Muizenberg sits at the northern corner of the False Bay seaboard, where the Cape Peninsula joins the sandy Cape Flats. Main Road and the railway line run together along the shore. To the southeast the coast narrows past the smaller suburb of St James toward Kalk Bay, while the Cape Flats stretch inland behind the beachfront.
Above the village, Muizenberg Peak rises steeply to the west.
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Updated July 2026