Cape Town is regularly chosen as the world’s most beautiful city in opinion polls. Located on the tip of the African continent, the city has been blessed with the most extraordinary landscape and scenic attractions. From magnificent Table Mountain to spectacular white sand beaches; from the winelands to the rolling fields of indigenous flowers, Cape Town is a dream tourist destination. It also has a fascinating history and has developed a superb infrastructure for the millions of tourists who descend on the city.

With its combination of modern high-rise skyscrapers and historic colonial and Malay architecture, Cape Town nestles in the shade of Table Mountain. Reaching out into the bay is the city’s top tourist attraction, the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront, while some of the city’s prime residential areas hug the slopes of the mountain on all sides.

Other major sights include the charming Bo Kaap neighbourhood, the famous Clifton beach with its multi-million dollar apartments and nearby Robben Island where the country’s most famous politician, Nelson Mandela, was incarcerated for 27 years. The city is also home to the country’s Parliament, ensuring the presence of a large diplomatic community. While Johannesburg to the north is the business capital of the country, Capetonians claim that their city offers a much higher standard of living. While the country’s wealth may be in the north, Cape Town certainly comes on top in the beauty stakes.

To cater for the host of international visitors, Cape Town has some superb hotels, a number of which have featured in lists of the World’s Top 10 Hotels. Many of the very upmarket hotels can be found in or around the V&A Waterfront, while others lie alongside the beaches by the slopes of Table Mountain. For those on a budget, there are hundreds of guesthouses in most areas of the city.

When it comes to restaurants, the city boasts excellent cuisine from around the globe, along with an increasing number of African eateries. As a major drawcard for the rich and famous, Cape Town is awash with celebrities in the peak summer season (December to February) and a number of exclusive nightclubs and bars have sprung up to cater for them.

Most visitors to Cape Town enter the country through Johannesburg airport on their way to the city, but an increasing number of direct flights from Europe, Asia and the Middle East now fly directly to Cape Town International Airport. There are good bus and train links to the rest of the country, but the long distances involved mean many tourists prefer to fly or rent vehicles to take a leisurely drive.

In essence, Cape Town has a Mediterranean-type climate with distinct seasons. As with Australian and New Zealand climates, Cape Town’s southern hemispherical positioning means summers take the place of winters when compared with northern hemisphere continents like North America and Europe.

Summertime in Cape Town is from November to February, when days are generally nice and sunny with average temperatures in the region of 25°C. Rainfall is mild year round and mainly hits during the winter months of June to August. Winter days and nights are also fairly mild due to Atlantic and Indian Ocean tempering.

There is no written history of the inhabitants until the arrival of the Portuguese explore Bartholomew Dias in 1486, fossil remains have shown that it was home to Early Stone Age hunter-gatherers. The first tribe to live there were the San people. They were displaced by the Khoikhoi from the north, who brought with them herds of cattle and sheep. They were the dominant tribe when the Europeans sailed into Table Bay.

After Dias, the next person to call at the Cape was Vasco da Gama in 1497, but it was the arrival of the Dutch in 1652 that really established it as a half-way station for passing ships. Led by Jan van Riebeeck, the Dutch East India set up buildings and gradually made it their home. The first immigrants were from Malaysia two years later. The first slaves were brought in from Java and Madagascar.

The first permanent fortification was the Castle of Good Hope, which was completed in 1679. The oldest building in South Africa, you can visit in central Cape Town. Simon van der Stel, after whom the town of Stellenbosch is named, arrived in 1679 to replace Van Riebeeck as governor. Van der Stel founded the Cape wine industry by bringing grape vines with him on his ship, an industry which would quickly grow to be important for the region. The 1688 arrival of the French Huguenots, who were escaping religious prosecution, further bolstered wine making.

The British took control of the Cape in the early 1800’s, opening up trade and overseeing the establishment of Cape Town as a city. They repealed pass laws in 1829, making the Hottentot people equal to the Europeans and freed the slaves – numbering about 39,000 – in 1834. The freed slaves built an area known as the Bo-Kaap, which also still exists today and is a fascinating tourist attraction.

While this was taking place, about 10,000 decided to leave for the north. They set off in 1836, a journey that was to become known as the Great Trek. This opened up the rest of the country for trade, but there were many battles with indigenous tribes in the hinterland. After the discovery of gold and diamonds, Cape Town lost its status as the country’s most important city.

The segregation between white and black had become a major political issue in the country when the National Party made it law in 1948 and the country entered its darkest political period known as apartheid. Cape Town was regarded as a Coloured preference area to the exclusion of Black Africans. That ended when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and a true democracy was established in the country in 1994.