Cape Town's bright hillside quarter
Bo-Kaap
Rows of flat-fronted houses in lime, pink, blue and yellow on cobbled streets below Signal Hill.
Why Bo-Kaap is lime green
Bo-Kaap lies on the slope of Signal Hill above central Cape Town. From the 18th century it housed craftsmen and freed slaves, many brought by the Dutch from South-East Asia, India and elsewhere in Africa. Their descendants, long called Cape Malays, are mostly Muslim, and the district has some of the oldest mosques in South Africa. The single-storey houses, in Cape Dutch and Georgian styles, are each painted a different bright colour. A common account says houses had to be white while they were rented, and that owners chose bold colours once they could buy them, as a sign of freedom. Others link fresh paint to the celebration of Eid. The exact origin is not certain.
Values are fair approximations of what the eye sees there, not measurements.
Written by the Rang desk with AI assistance. Background: "Bo-Kaap" on Wikipedia. If you know Bo-Kaap and we have it wrong, tell us.
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