In the Old Town House

In this museum, one of the most exquisite little art museums in the country, both the collection and the building in which it is housed are of great aesthetic and historical importance.

The early Cape Dutch building, one of the architectural gems of the Mother City, houses a precious and internationally renowned collection of the artworks by 16^th to 18^th century Dutch and Flemish masters.

Situated on Greenmarket Square in the heart of old Cape Town, the Old Town House was one of the first double-storey buildings when it was erected in 1755-1761 under the governorship of the popular Rijk Tulbagh. The Cape-silver trowel with which its first stone was laid by Baerendt Artois, member of the Court of Justice, is still on view in the Museum.

With its proud three-arched portico, its gay green shutters against the white and yellow plasterwork, its exuberant moundings and fanlights and its quaint belfry the Old Town House, for all its modesty, is as endearing a little Rococo building as any found in Europe.

The Old Town House also known as the Burgher Watch House reminds one of the days that the little settlement on Table Bay became a City with its own civic pride and institutions. It served, at one time or another, as the seat of the Burgher Watch, as that of the Burgher Senate, as a magistrate's court and as a police station. Then it became Cape Town's City Hall which it remained until, in 1905, the City Hall on the Grand Parade was completed.