Church Square and the Slave lodge

During their stay in Cape Town visitors should make their way to the top corner of Adderley Street to Church Square and the Slave Lodge and experience some of the area’s history while on their Cape Town vacations.

Church Square is located at the entrance of the Gothic styled Groote Kerk, it is the site where slaves would wait ‘under a slave tree’ while their owners attended church. A statue of Jan Hendrik Hofmeyer was erected in the square in 1920 to acknowledge Hofmeyers efforts to have Dutch recognized as a language equal to English in the constitution in 1910.

Despite its historical significance, Church Square acted as a car park from the 1970’s until the 1990’s. In 2004 it was converted into one of the city’s multi-functional ‘green’ spaces.

The former Slave Lodge is a prominent building in Church Square and is open to the public from Monday to Friday for a small fee. It was known until 1967 as the Cultural History Museum when the Slave Lodge was built on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. In its time it housed thousands of slaves, this is when slavery was a large industry in the Cape Colony. It was during this time that it was also known as the Cape Colony’s largest brothel.

In 1810, after the British had taken over and auctioned off all of the slaves, the building became the Supreme Court. The Slave Lodge was then used as government offices until 1966, when it was reopened as a museum.

Today the Slave Lodge acts as a monument to the past with historical displays on the Cape as well as collections of antiques and artifacts from around the world and an exhibition on the years of slavery.

There are many five star hotels in Cape Town city bowl, The Nelson Mandela Place, for example is a few meters away from the Slave Lodge, on the other side of the road. There are also many Cape Town vacation rentals in the area for tired travelers.