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Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State province and is often called South Africa's judicial capital, because the Supreme Court of Appeal sits here. Set on the highveld at about 1,395 meters in the middle of the country, it is known in Sesotho as Mangaung, the place of cheetahs, and is nicknamed the city of roses for its gardens and annual rose festival.
Founded as a British fort in 1846, the town became the capital of the Orange Free State republic from 1854 to 1902, and many of its stately public buildings date from that era. The South African Native National Congress, later the ANC, was founded here in 1912, and J. R. R. Tolkien was born in the city in 1892.
Visitors walk tree-lined President Brand Street past the Fourth Raadsaal, the Old Presidency and the City Hall, visit the National Women's Monument and the Anglo-Boer War Museum, and drive up Naval Hill to see giraffe in the Franklin Game Reserve.
The Fourth Raadsaal on President Brand Street in Bloemfontein was inaugurated in 1893 as the parliament of the Orange Free State republic. It served as a British military hospital after the city fell in 1900, and today the building is the meeting place of the Free State Provincial Legislature.
The First Raadsaal on St Georges Street in Bloemfontein was built in 1849 as a school and meeting hall. In the young town's early years the first Catholic, Anglican and Methodist congregations all held their services in it, and the low whitewashed building still stands in the old center.
The Old Presidency on President Brand Street in central Bloemfontein was the official residence of the presidents of the Orange Free State from 1886 until the Anglo-Boer War. The restored house is now a museum, art gallery and theater recalling the years of the independent republic.
The Supreme Court of Appeal on President Brand Street in Bloemfontein is the second highest court in South Africa, below the Constitutional Court. As the Appellate Division it was the country's highest court from 1910 to 1994, and it is why Bloemfontein is called South Africa's judicial capital.
The National Women's Monument in Bloemfontein honors some 27,000 Boer women and children who died in British concentration camps during the Second Boer War. Unveiled in 1913, its 35 meter obelisk rises over a bronze group by Anton van Wouw, and Emily Hobhouse's ashes lie at its foot.
The Anglo-Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein, officially the War Museum of the Boer Republics, is the only museum in the world dedicated solely to the Anglo-Boer Wars of 1899 to 1902. Beside the Women's Monument, it holds a collection of art, dioramas and exhibits explaining the war and its causes.
The National Museum on Aliwal Street in Bloemfontein was founded in 1877 and opened to the public in 1878. It covers natural history, cultural history and art, and its best known treasure is the Florisbad skull, an important early human fossil from the Free State region.
The Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein occupies a Neo-Dutch style mansion on Grant's Hill, completed in 1941 as the residence of the Governor General of South Africa. Since 1985 it has been an art museum with a permanent collection, changing exhibitions and a café in its sculpture garden.
Naval Hill rises above central Bloemfontein and is named after the naval guns the British placed on it in 1900. Its summit holds the Franklin Game Reserve, with giraffe and antelope, a large statue of Nelson Mandela and the Naval Hill Planetarium, the first digital one in the southern hemisphere.
The Twin-Spire Church, or Tweetoringkerk, in central Bloemfontein is the church of the city's Dutch Reformed congregation, founded in 1848 as the mother church of the Free State capital. Its pair of tall pointed towers, which give the building its name, make it a well known landmark in town.
The Free State National Botanical Garden lies about 10 kilometers north of central Bloemfontein among dolerite hills. Founded in 1965, its 70 hectares hold about 400 plant species native to the Free State, Northern Cape and Lesotho, plus a dam, a bird hide and a wild olive tree maybe 200 years old.
Boyden Observatory stands at Maselspoort, some 20 kilometers northeast of Bloemfontein, where Harvard University moved its southern observing station from Peru in 1927. Now run by the University of the Free State, it hosts public open evenings that take advantage of the clear, dark highveld skies.
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