Bloemfontein

Bloemfontein is the capital of the Free State and the seat of the Supreme Court of Appeal, which makes it the judicial one of South Africa’s three capitals. It sits on open highveld at about 1,395 m, roughly halfway between Johannesburg and the Cape. It makes a convenient overnight on a long drive, but a spare day here turns up a lot of history, plus giraffe grazing on a hill above the city centre.

Getting there

The N1, N6 and N8 all meet here. Johannesburg is just under 400 km north and Cape Town about 1,000 km south west, with Kimberley around 160 km away and Maseru, in Lesotho, about 137 km. Bram Fischer International Airport is just outside town, with scheduled flights to the main South African cities, and the big rental firms have desks there. Long distance coaches from Intercape, Greyhound and others stop in the city. The N1 north towards Gauteng is a toll road.

When to go

The climate is semi-arid. Summer is the hot, wet season. Rain tends to come as a short storm late in the day. Winter days are dry and often sunny, but nights drop below freezing and frost is normal, so bring warm layers. The Mangaung Rose Festival, held in October around the Loch Logan Waterfront, is the main event of the year and ties in with the city’s old nickname, the City of Roses.

What to do

Start on Naval Hill. The Franklin Game Reserve, set aside in 1930 and covering about 250 hectares, wraps around it, and you can drive or walk the tracks past giraffe, zebra, eland and blesbok. A large statue of Nelson Mandela stands on the summit looking over the city, and the University of the Free State runs a digital planetarium up there, opened in 2013.

The Boer War story is told well here. The National Women’s Memorial remembers the roughly 27,000 Boer women and children who died in British camps, and Emily Hobhouse is buried at its foot. The Anglo-Boer War Museum covers the wider war. In town, the First Raadsaal, a plain building from 1849, is where the old Free State republic’s parliament first met, and the Waaihoek Wesleyan Church is where the South African Native National Congress, later the ANC, was founded in 1912.

For something quieter, the Oliewenhuis Art Museum is a Cape Dutch style former official residence with South African art inside and walking trails in the grounds. The National Museum holds the Florisbad skull, an important fossil in the study of human origins, and the National Botanical Garden has about 70 hectares of local plants.

Good to know

J. R. R. Tolkien was born here in 1892, though he left as a small child. Crime is less of a worry here than in Johannesburg or Cape Town, according to Wikivoyage, but keep away from the railway station and the streets east of the line. Restaurants shut early by big city standards, so plan to sit down before about 7.30 pm.

Last updated 6 October 2026. Sources: Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Travelstart, The Crazy Tourist.