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Pietermaritzburg is the capital of KwaZulu-Natal and the province's second city after Durban, set in the hills about 90 kilometers inland from Durban. Founded by Voortrekkers in 1838 and called Maritzburg or PMB for short, it is known in Zulu as uMgungundlovu. It became the capital of the short-lived Boer republic of Natalia and, after 1843, the seat of the British Colony of Natal.
The colonial city left a red-brick center around the City Hall, while the Church of the Vow recalls the Voortrekker promise made before the Battle of Blood River. In 1893 a young Mohandas Gandhi was thrown off a train at the city's station, a night that led him to choose nonviolent resistance, and a bronze statue of him now stands in Church Street.
Visitors explore the City Hall, the Msunduzi Museum and Tatham Art Gallery, walk the KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Garden, see zebra in Queen Elizabeth Park, and drive out to Midmar Dam and Howick Falls. The city is also the start or finish of the Comrades Marathon and the Dusi Canoe Marathon.
Pietermaritzburg City Hall was built between 1899 and 1901 to replace a town hall that burned in 1898 and was opened by the Duke of Cornwall in August 1901. In Flemish Renaissance Revival style with red brick walls and a 47 meter corner campanile, it is one of the city's best-known sights.
The Church of the Vow in Pietermaritzburg fulfills the promise made by the Voortrekkers on 9 December 1838, before the Battle of Blood River, to build a sacred church if they were granted victory over the Zulu. Jan Gerritze Bantjes raised the funds from the Boer townsfolk, and it still stands.
The bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Church Street, central Pietermaritzburg, shows the campaigner as a young man. Archbishop Desmond Tutu unveiled it in 1993, a century after Gandhi was thrown off a train at the city's station, the event that set him on his path of nonviolent resistance.
Pietermaritzburg Railway Station, on the southwest corner of the city center, is where Mohandas Gandhi was put off a train on 1 June 1893 for refusing to leave first class. Shivering through the night in its waiting room, he resolved to stay in South Africa and fight racial discrimination.
The Msunduzi Museum in Pietermaritzburg grew out of the Voortrekker Museum, which opened on 16 December 1912 in the old Church of the Vow. Later acquired by the city, it is still active today with a wider focus under its new name, and its displays are housed in the old Longmarket Girls' School.
The Tatham Art Gallery in Pietermaritzburg has filled the old Supreme Court building and an old Presbyterian church on Albert Luthuli Street since 1990. Its European paintings and South African art, with works by Degas, Picasso, Renoir and Matisse, form one of the country's major art collections.
The Bessie Head Library in Pietermaritzburg, once the Natal Society Library, is the oldest library in KwaZulu-Natal. It opened as the city's first public library in 1849, became a legal deposit library in 1916, sits behind the City Hall and since 2005 bears the name of the writer Bessie Head.
The KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Garden lies along Mayor's Walk in the western suburbs of Pietermaritzburg. Founded in 1874, it grows plants of eastern South Africa and the Northern Hemisphere, with a century-old avenue of plane trees and a forested hillside of footpaths above the Dorpspruit.
Queen Elizabeth Park lies on the northern slopes above Pietermaritzburg and is the headquarters of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, the province's conservation body. Zebra, impala and blesbok roam the 93 hectare reserve, and the iDube Trail, named for the Zulu word for zebra, looks over the city.
Midmar Dam is a reservoir and recreation area in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands near Pietermaritzburg and Howick, easily reached from the N3 motorway. People come for boating, swimming, waterskiing, fishing and picnics, and each February it hosts the Midmar Mile, among the largest open-water swims.
Howick Falls, in the town of Howick near Pietermaritzburg, is a waterfall about 95 meters high on the Umgeni River. The Zulu called it KwaNogqaza, the place of the tall one, and local legend holds that a giant serpent-like creature, the Inkanyamba, lives in the pool at the foot of the falls.
The Comrades Marathon is run each year between Pietermaritzburg and Durban over about 88 kilometers, and is the world's largest and oldest ultramarathon. The direction alternates between the up run from Durban and the down run from Pietermaritzburg, and most years over 10,000 runners finish.
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