Bertram House

The last of its kind in the city, Bertram House is the only surviving Georgian-style brick house in Cape Town, standing at the top of Government Avenue on the edge of the Company's Garden. Its warm red brickwork and restrained classical proportions set it apart from the whitewashed Cape Dutch homes elsewhere in town, reflecting the tastes of the British settlers who arrived in the early nineteenth century.

The house was built around the 1830s for an English attorney and his family, and it takes its name from an early owner. After years of neglect it was rescued, restored and opened as a museum, becoming a rare physical link to the English community that shaped so much of colonial Cape society.

Inside, the rooms are furnished as a genteel English home of the Georgian and early Victorian periods. The collection centres on English furniture, silver, glass and porcelain, much of it donated in memory of a family that loved such pieces, arranged across parlours and bedrooms to evoke daily life among the settler elite. Delicate ceramics and polished wood give the interiors a quietly formal atmosphere.

Its location makes it simple to include in a walk through the historic core. The house sits beside the University of Cape Town's Hiddingh Campus and the South African National Gallery, and just above the oak-lined avenue that runs through the Company's Garden, so several of the city's cultural landmarks lie within a few minutes' stroll. The museum is small and can be seen in under an hour. For visitors interested in decorative arts, or in the contrast between Cape Dutch and British colonial living, Bertram House offers a compact, characterful window onto a particular slice of the past.