Built in 1679 to house the Dutch East India Company's slaves, this building now houses the South African Cultural History Museum. The museum has just completed a long-overdue overhaul of its exhibits, and aims to provide a greater focus on the colony's slave history as well as the story behind Cape Town's multicultural makeup. A great success was the \"Hands That Shape Humanity\" exhibit: the world's largest humanitarian art exhibition, in which well-known personalities from around the world (the likes of Isabel Allende, Marion Jones, Carlos Santana, Desmond Tutu, and so on) shared their inspirations and wisdom. The permanent exhibits are drawn from the lives of the early Cape colonists, with various artifacts from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries on display, and drawings and photographs that give visitors an idea of what Cape Town looked like before the land-reclamation project and development of the mountain's slopes.

Copyright: Excerpted from Frommer's South Africa, 5th Edition, (c) 2008, Wiley Publishing, Inc.

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