Bloemfontein, South Africa: Travel Guide to the City of Roses

Bloemfontein sits high on the grassland plateau of the Free State, roughly 1,400 metres above sea level, almost exactly midway on the great overland spine that links Johannesburg with Cape Town. It is about 400 kilometres southwest of Johannesburg — a four-and-a-half-hour drive down the N1, or a short hop into Bram Fischer International Airport — and it has always been a place travellers pass through on their way between the two ends of South Africa. That position is the whole story of the city. Founded in 1846 around a small British fort on the banks of a spruit, it grew into the capital of the Boer republic of the Orange Free State, and today it is the judicial capital of South Africa, home to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Locally the city is known by two names: Bloemfontein, and Mangaung, the Sesotho name meaning “place of cheetahs.” It is also called the City of Roses, for the tens of thousands of rose bushes planted through its parks and street islands. History has a way of concentrating here. The South African Native National Congress — which became the African National Congress — was founded in a modest Wesleyan church in the Waaihoek district in 1912. The concentration camps of the South African War left their deepest scar just outside town, and are memorialised there. And in 1892, in a house near the market square, J.R.R. Tolkien was born; the family left for England when he was three, but Bloemfontein still claims him. For travellers crossing the country by rail, it is the natural pause between the diamond fields of the north and the vineyards of the Cape.

What to see in Bloemfontein

• Naval Hill and the Franklin Game Reserve — A flat-topped koppie rising straight out of the suburbs, with a game reserve on top where zebra, giraffe, springbok and blesbok graze within sight of the city skyline. A monumental bronze statue of Nelson Mandela stands at the summit, arm raised over the plains.
• Naval Hill Planetarium — Housed in the old Lamont-Hussey Observatory, this was the first digital planetarium in sub-Saharan Africa. The Free State’s dry, high-altitude air made this hill an astronomical site long before it was a visitor attraction.
• Oliewenhuis Art Museum — One of the loveliest small museums in the country: a graceful 1940s residence, once the presidential home in Bloemfontein, now hung with South African art and surrounded by a sculpture garden and wooded grounds with a tea room.
• Anglo-Boer War Museum and the National Women’s Memorial — A serious, well-curated museum on the 1899–1902 war, beside a tall sandstone obelisk raised to the women and children who died in the British camps. The ashes of Emily Hobhouse, the campaigner who exposed those conditions, are interred at its base.
• The Fourth Raadsaal — The red-brick and sandstone parliament house of the old Orange Free State republic, completed in 1893 and still in use by the provincial legislature. Its domed chamber is among the finest Victorian interiors in South Africa.
• Waaihoek Wesleyan Church — The small church where the organisation that became the ANC was founded. It is preserved as a national heritage site and reads as one of the most significant rooms in modern South African history.
• Free State National Botanical Garden — Around seventy hectares of indigenous highveld and Free State flora, with dolerite koppies, walking trails and good birding on the edge of the city.
• National Museum and Queen’s Fort — The National Museum holds important Karoo fossil and palaeontological collections, including material tied to the nearby Florisbad hominin site; Queen’s Fort, dating from 1848, covers the city’s military past.

What to eat in Bloemfontein

This is farming country, and the cooking is unapologetically about meat and fire. The braai is less a meal than a social institution: coils of boerewors sausage, lamb chops from the Karoo, and sosaties — skewers marinated in a mild curry and apricot glaze — cooked over coals. Slow-cooked potjiekos, a stew built in layers in a three-legged cast-iron pot, appears at weekend gatherings. Alongside it you will be given pap, a stiff maize porridge, with a tomato-and-onion relish called sheba or a fiery vegetable chakalaka. Biltong and droëwors — air-dried, spiced beef and sausage — are the local snack, sold in every supermarket and far better than that sounds. In the townships, look for vetkoek, fried dough split and filled with curried mince, and grilled chops served with pap from open-air braai stands.

Sweet things run to the Cape-Dutch tradition: melktert, a cinnamon-dusted milk tart; koeksisters, plaited doughnuts fried and dropped straight into cold syrup; and malva pudding, a sticky apricot sponge served hot under cream or custard. Mornings mean rusks — dense twice-baked biscuits — dunked into strong coffee or rooibos, the red bush tea that South Africans drink at all hours. The wine list will be excellent and inexpensive, drawn from the Cape a thousand kilometres south, and Amarula, a cream liqueur made from marula fruit, is the standard nightcap.

Shopping and crafts

The Free State shares a long border with Lesotho, and the best thing to carry home is a Basotho blanket — heavy wool, boldly patterned, genuinely worn rather than made for tourists. Look too for the conical woven mokorotlo hat, beadwork, and soapstone carving. Loch Logan Waterfront and Mimosa Mall cover everyday shopping; the museum shop at Oliewenhuis is the place for ceramics, prints and craft with real character. Vacuum-packed biltong, rusks and rooibos travel well, and in a city that calls itself the City of Roses, rose-scented soaps and preserves are an easy souvenir.

Best time to visit

Bloemfontein has a dry, high-altitude climate with summer rainfall. Spring, from September to November, and autumn, in March and April, are the most comfortable: warm sunny days, cool evenings, and the rose gardens at their best in mid-spring, when the city holds its rose festival. Midsummer, December to February, is hot — often into the mid-thirties Celsius — with dramatic late-afternoon thunderstorms that clear quickly. Winter, June to August, is dry, bright and startlingly cold after dark, with night temperatures near or below freezing; days are clear and blue, and the thinned-out bush makes it a fine season for game viewing.

Good to know

• The altitude is around 1,400 metres and the air is very dry. Sunburn and dehydration come on faster than you expect — carry water and a hat, even in winter.
• Bram Fischer International Airport lies about ten kilometres from the centre, with short domestic flights from Johannesburg and Cape Town. Driving is on the left.
• Three languages are in daily use here — Sesotho, Afrikaans and English. English is universally understood in hotels, restaurants and museums.
• The currency is the South African rand; cards are accepted almost everywhere, and tipping is customarily around ten percent. Carry small notes for petrol attendants and car guards.
• Take normal city precautions after dark, use metered taxis or ride-hailing rather than walking between districts at night, and arrange guided visits to Waaihoek and township sites through your hotel.

Palace Tours includes Bloemfontein and the wider Free State on our luxury rail journeys across South Africa, where the country unfolds slowly through the window between Pretoria and the Cape. Speak with our specialists to plan a private extension in the city, or to build the Free State into a longer southern African itinerary.