2 Best Sights in City Center, Johannesburg

Victoria Yards is an urban renewal project on the fringe of the inner city that has reimagined abandoned warehouses into a mixed-use lifestyle complex. It supports the surrounding community through its three on-site nonprofits and urban farming project, while locals and tourists explore the 50-odd artists’ workshops, decor showrooms, galleries, and fashion outlets housed in its brick-face buildings. The driving force behind Victoria Yards is sustainability, with tenants making designer bags from vibrant shweshwe fabric (a printed cotton fabric) and plastic waste, homeware made from recycled industrial parts, upcycled pre-loved clothing, and a sorbet stand that buys overripe, unsold fruit from community street-side sellers to make frozen desserts.

If your appetite gets the better of you on a visit, there’s an old-school "tuck shop," coffee roastery, and bakery that stands shoulder-to-shoulder to a small-batch gin distillery, as well as a bar, and a traditional walk-in fish-and-chips shop with wooden benches arranged in the courtyard. Although it’s open 7 days a week, the First Sunday Market (first Sunday of the month, 10 am–4 pm) hosts a collection of additional vendors who sell everything from collectibles, antiques, and handmade African curios to food and drink. There is free, undercover parking available, as well as overflow on-street parking with parking guards, making it safe to visit on your own.

A giant world map that is handmade of aluminum wire depicts the migration of hominins at the entrance of Origins Centre. This modern museum (situated at the University of the Witwatersrand) explores the development and culture of modern humans over the past 100,000 years, and in particular rock art and stone tools—of which southern Africa has the oldest in the world. Origins is spacious and elegantly designed across three stories that house permanent and temporary exhibitions, which cater to schoolkids and visiting professors alike. It was renovated in 2021 and boasts interactive multimedia displays and photographs that are enhanced by a free Augmented Reality app (OriginsCentreAR), which can be used with the museum’s free Wi-Fi. Origin Shop, the museum’s gift shop, sells high-quality crafts made by the Khomani San in the Northern Cape as well as hard-to-source books on rock art in southern Africa. If you don’t make it to the museum, you can experience most of its exhibitions via its websites, thanks to Google Arts & Culture.