3 Best Sights in Johannesburg, South Africa

Anton van Wouw's statue of President Paul Kruger, surrounded by sentries, dominates this pleasant square, which is flanked by some of the city's most historic buildings: the Old Raadsaal (Council Chamber), designed by Dutch architect Sytze Wierda; the Palace of Justice (used as a military hospital during the South African War), built in early Italian Renaissance style; and the modern Provincial Administration Building. On Wednesday mornings you can watch a ceremonial military parade and flag-raising.

This square, once called the J. G. Strijdom Square, was in apartheid times dominated by a huge bust of former pro-apartheid prime minister J. G. Strijdom. However, on May 31, 2001—exactly 40 years to the day after the government declared South Africa a republic—the supporting structure of the whole edifice crumbled, and Strijdom fell unceremoniously into the parking garage under the square. The public square has since been renamed the Lillian Ngoyi Square for the prominent antiapartheid activist. The Living Women's Monument was inaugurated here in 2016, honoring Ngoyi and other anti-apartheid leaders, including Helen Joseph, Rahima Moosa, and Sophie de Bruyn.

In 1955 the Freedom Charter was adopted on a dusty field here by the Congress Alliance, a gathering of political and cultural groups trying to map a way forward in the repressive 1950s. The charter, the guiding document of the African National Congress, envisaged an alternative nonracial dispensation in which "all shall be equal before the law." Its significance in South Africa is similar to that of the Declaration of Independence in the United States, and it influenced South Africa's new constitution, adopted in 1995 and widely considered one of the best and most progressive in the world. The site has been recently revamped as an open-air museum centered around the Ten Pillars of Freedom and includes shops and a four-star hotel in what is being described as South Africa's first township entertainment explosion center.