Rhodes Memorial

Below Table Mountain, on the slopes of Devil's Peak, a monument modelled on an ancient Greek temple overlooks the city. The Rhodes Memorial commemorates Cecil John Rhodes, an English-born politician and mining magnate who shaped British imperial policy in southern Africa. Herbert Baker drew up the design, and builders finished the work in 1912. The building follows the temple at Segesta, though it resembles the temple of Pergamon more closely.

The staircase has 49 steps, one for every year of Rhodes's life. The Cape granite was quarried on Table Mountain itself. At the base waits Physical Energy, George Frederic Watts's bronze horseman. Eight bronze lions by John Macallan Swan flank the climb, and the memorial also holds a bust of Rhodes. An inscription praises the man as one who loved and served South Africa. The building embodies Rhodes's vision of a British dominion from the Cape to Cairo. That same ambition is why the memorial divides opinion in post-apartheid South Africa. The Rhodes Must Fall movement, which removed a Rhodes statue from the University of Cape Town, grew out of that debate. Vandals have left their marks on the monument too.

Part of Table Mountain National Park, the site is a starting point for hikes up Devil's Peak. Groves of European oaks and stone pines surround it, with pockets of original Afromontane forest between them. A small forest of Silvertrees grows nearby, a tree unique to this region. Below the memorial, you find a game enclosure with eland, zebra and wildebeest. Rhodes himself favoured this spot, and he once owned large stretches of these lower slopes. He gave most of that land to the nation. That donated land carries the University of Cape Town's upper campus and the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden.