Long Street – Bookshops, Brothels & Backpackers

While the shops and bars on Cape Town’s most notorious street swap out from year to year, the facades and the foundations are somehow still with us after a century and change!

So, following closely Desmond Martin’s remarkable guide ‘Walking Long Street’, I propose you join my curious posse to finally, belatedly get around to appreciating one of the greatest continuous city-length heritage sites in the entire Global South.

That’s not an overstatement! Unlike it’s poor sisters Adderley and Buitenkant, Long Street still requires only a bystander’s imagination to effect a triptastic time-travel experience as you angle your eyes to enjoy the ornate gables, impasto colours and imperial detritus from the strangest decades of an evaporating century.

From colonial embassy lodges, to semi-ancient mosques, to the loveable Turkish Dive-Baths, to pioneering concept hotels, scattered indie coffee roasters, septuagenarian Africana bookshops and the oldest elevator in South Africa, the fabric and texture of the Mother City in the Modern Day is nowhere else more self-evident nor more gorgeously ageing than along the looped strip of CBD mansions between Orange and Strand.

So feel free to jump aboard the strolling rundown at any point, just so long as you bring water, cameras, questions, patience, a tightened bladder, friends, and interest in the city you find yourself in!