Robben Island Museum Tour

Robben Island or Robbeneiland (Afrikaans) is an island in South Africa, located off Cape Town, 6.9 km west of the coast of Bloubergstrand.

Inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1999, Robben Island is known for being used as a prison, leprosarium, psychiatric hospital and military defence post. In the twentieth century, black opponents of the apartheid regime, sentenced to long sentences, were interned there, including three future South African presidents (Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma)

In 1964, an anti-apartheid revolutionary named Nelson Mandela was arrested and brought to South Africa’s Robben Island, just west of Cape Town. He would spend the next 18 years imprisoned in an 8×7-foot cell, forced to do hard labor, and permitted only one visitor a year.

Even so, Mandela went on to become his country’s first black president, a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and known globally for his significant contributions to human rights and social justice. Robben Island—where most of Mandela’s 27-year prison sentence was served—was a place of isolation for nearly 300 years, housing many political prisoners and serving as both a lunatic asylum and leper colony.

Today, the island remains a tangible symbol of political freedom and a reminder of the difficult road to South African democracy. Read on to learn more about how to visit this UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Robben Island is located off Cape Town, 6.9 km west of the coast of Bloubergstrand.

Inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1999, Robben Island is known for being used as a prison, leprosarium, psychiatric hospital and military defence post. In the twentieth century, black opponents of the apartheid regime, sentenced to long sentences, were interned there, including three future South African presidents (Nelson Mandela, Kgalema Motlanthe and Jacob Zuma).