South Africa Travels Blog

Pietermaritzburg is located in a deep valley in the natal Midlands, one hour northwest of the sprawling city of Durban. The town is deceptively large and as yet unspoiled by tourists hordes and uninspired modern architecture. The main reason to visit Pietermaritzburg, unless you are a student at one of the institutes of higher learning is the architecture.

Pietermaritzburg is one of the best preserved Victorian cities in the world. Its brick buildings and sedate, regal structures (including the largest brick building in the Southern Hemisphere) stand in stark contrast to the concrete slabs other cities built in the interests of efficiency and economy. The architecture helps to preserve Pietermaritzburg’s ambience. This feeling is supported by the narrow winding alleys that make their way in between the larger through-fares.

Pietermaritzburg today is a wonderful hybrid of big-city and small town influences. though it is known as “The City in the Country”, and agriculture is the backbone of the local economy.

Pietermaritzburg has enough good museums and galleries to stand up to any other city in South Africa. It is a wonderful town too often neglected by tourists.

Essential British Colonial in character, Pietermaritzburg is a city of contrasts. New blends with old in graceful harmony, nestling within a ring of green hills.

Pietermaritzburg has a built environment of great quality and distinction, described by the Historical monuments Council as “One of the most important high character cities in Africa”. Hermione Hobhouse, secretary of London’s Victorian Society, wrote after a visit in 1981: “I found the architecture all I had been promised and it is indeed one of the finest Victorial cities I have ever visited”.

Strangely, the founding of the City of Pietermaritzburg had nothing to do with the British. In 1838, the Dutch-speaking Voortrekkers moved to Natal from the Cape and laid out a town between the Umsindusi River and Dorp Spruit (stream). They named it after their leader Pieter Mauritz Retief. But, over the years the letter “u” in Pietermauritzburg was discarded and, at the time of the town’s centenary in 1938, it was decreed that the leader of the second trek into Natal, Gert Maritz, should also be commemorated and the city’s official name became Pietermaritzburg.

Here is a city proud of its heritage and determined to conserve buildings of character.
In Church Street, one of the finest Victorian shop-fronts in South Africa stands a few doors from the Philip Dudgeon designed Standard bank building within its beautiful stained glass windows depicting the four seasons (a famous faux pas perpetrated in the northern hemisphere for a customer in the southern hemisphere.

Outstanding among the many Victorian and Edwardian buildings of red brick is the City Hall, built on the site of the old Voortrrekker Raadsaal (meeting hall) in 1900 and declared a national monument in 1969 Notable for its domes and fine stained glass windows, it is the largest all-brick building in the southern hemisphere and an ideal starting point for tourists setting out on Town Trails walking tours.

Pietermaritzburg City Hall

A few hitching rails in the central area are reminders of the city’s romantic and leisurely past. One is near the entrance to the Natal Witness, South Africa’s oldest daily newspaper, founded in 1846 by David Dale Buchanan, a Scottish immigrant.

Upon the hill overlooking the city there is much evidence of the settlement’s transformation into a garrison town. Fort Napier was founded in 1843 when the 45th Regiment (Sherwood Foresters) camped there and remained for 15 years – a record in the British Army for the length of overseas service.
The fort’s St George’s Church, built in 1897 by troops as a memorial to their comrades, and the nearby cemetery with its military graves dating back to the 1840s, are favourite spots for tourists who like to soak up the atmosphere of a bygone era.