Durban travel guide

Top 10 sights in Durban

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© Yan-Di Chang · CC BY 2.0

   Umlazi

   The largest township in South Africa after Soweto, southwest of Durban, laid out from 1962 to house Zulu-speaking people removed from the city. Its rail line runs into central Durban, and the sections are still lettered as the planners numbered them.

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2. 

   2© Konono77 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Chatsworth

   A township southwest of Durban laid out in the 1950s to house Indian residents removed from the city under the Group Areas Act, and placed as a buffer between white suburbs and African townships. It remains the largest Indian-descended settlement in the country.

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   KwaMashu

   A township twelve kilometres north of Durban, built in the 1950s to receive people cleared out of Cato Manor. The name means the place of Marshall, after a sugar baron, and the township produced much of the music and theatre that came out of Natal in the 1980s.

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4. 

   4© Amada44 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   uShaka Marine World

   A sixteen-hectare aquarium and water park opened in April 2004, built around a mock 1940s cargo wreck, with about seventeen million litres of water in it. The dolphin and seal shows carry the attendance; the shark tank is the better exhibit.

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5. 

   5© coons10 · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Ntuzuma

   The youngest of the four townships known as PINK — Phoenix, Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu — laid out by the city of Durban in the 1970s. It counted 114,231 residents at the 2001 census, its sections ranging from formal housing to large informal settlements.

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6. 

   6© Akidjoh · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Juma Mosque

   A mosque founded in 1881 on Grey Street and enlarged many times since, now reckoned the largest in the southern hemisphere. It was built by the Indian community that came to Natal as traders after the indentured labourers.

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7. 

   7© Purves, M. (Michaelwild at en.wikipedia) · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Durban Botanic Gardens

   The oldest surviving botanical garden in Africa, laid out in 1849 to trial sugar and other crops. Its most important plant is a Wood's cycad set here in 1848 — the last of its species ever found, a male, so it can never breed and every other one in the world is its cutting.

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   North Beach

   The central stretch of the Golden Mile, the promenade along Durban's Indian Ocean front. The surf here has hosted professional contests since the 1960s, and the beaches have been netted against sharks since 1952.

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9. 

   9© Anabbie · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Riverside Soofie Mosque and Mausoleum

   A mosque and tomb of 1895 built around the grave of a Sufi teacher who came from India in 1895 and founded a network of mosques and orphanages along this coast. It remains a centre of South African Sufism.

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10. 

    10© South African Tourism from South Africa · CC BY 2.0

    South Beach, Durban

    The southern end of Durban's Golden Mile, a stretch of sand and promenade running up from uShaka Marine World. Shark nets have guarded the bathing here since the 1950s, and the breaks draw surfers the year round.

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   Mitchell Park Zoo

   The only zoo in Durban, opened in 1910 in a Morningside park, and now confined to birds, small mammals and reptiles after the larger animals were moved out. The tea garden under the fig trees is as much the reason people come.

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   2© Emma · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Durban South Africa Temple

   A temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, dedicated in February 2020 on the outskirts of Durban — white stone with a single spire, the second the church has built in South Africa.

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   3© Srvittal · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Clairwood Shree Siva Soobramoniar Temple

   A temple to Murugan at Clairwood, built in the 1880s and among the oldest raised by the indentured Indians brought to the Natal cane fields from 1860. Its April firewalking festival still draws thousands of devotees.

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   The Cenotaph

   A war memorial of 1926 in Farewell Square, in front of the city hall, in art deco stone with bronze relief panels. It commemorates the dead of the First World War and is the focus of Durban's remembrance services.

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   5© Mariannebritsstrodl · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Old Fort

   A fort of 1842 where a small British garrison was besieged by Boer forces for a month, until a rider crossed a thousand kilometres to Grahamstown to fetch relief. The walls survive in what is now a garden.

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