- In 1967 the South African doctor Christiaan Barnard performed the world’s first heart transplantation in the world in Cape Town. Less known is the fact that the patient, unfortunately, died of pneumonia 18 days after the ‘successful’ transplant.
- Trophy homes are houses worth more than ZAR 20,000,000. Most of South Africa’s trophy homes are found in Cape Town – in Camps Bay alone there are at least 150 of these houses. However almost half of the richest people of South Africa (48%) live in the City of Gold, Johannesburg.
- Legend has it that in the 1930s a local Cape Town newspaper claimed that Cape Town was the only city in South Africa that could justly call itself a metropolis. The public took to this description and because the word metropolis is taken from the Greek derivative of meter or metros meaning mother and polis meaning city, the nickname of “Mother City” was born. Although some people joke everything in Cape Town goes at a slower pace compared to Johannesburg – everything takes nine months.
- The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town is the most-visited destination in South Africa – ahead of Table Mountain.
- Long Street was originally called De Derde Berg Dwars Straat that roughly translates to ‘the third road parallel to the mountain’. The name was changed to Long Street in the 1790’s. Long Street is one of Cape Town’s oldest streets and is, not surprisingly, quite long at 1.7km in length. Long Street is a major part of the City’s street culture. A host of interesting shops, restaurants, bars, pubs and cafés line the street, making it the City’s funkiest bohemian haunts.
