JUNE 2026
TALK
DATE: Tuesday 16thJune
TIME: 20:00
SPEAKER: Pat Kramer
VENUE: The Athenaeum in Newlands, located at the intersection of Campground Road & Mariendahl Lane.
Drive through Boundary Terrace office park gates, turn left at the top into the dedicated Athenaeum parking area.
TOPIC: The Karoo Group’s two recent trips to the Karoo in search of unseen (by us) corbelled buildings to record & add to the register of these buildings.
In addition to the four corbelled buildings which they located, they revisited the site of Biesiesputs to reexamine the extraordinary water capture construction on the site – a sign of optimism if ever there was one.
The talk will be interspersed with images of odd scenes they encountered along the way. The Karoo always surprises.
OUTING
DATE: 20 June 2026 (NOTE: this is not the last Saturday of the month)
TIME: 10AM
TOPIC: THE OLD TOWN HOUSE in Greenmarket Square (Michaelis Collection)
MEETING PLACE The reception area outside the Old Town House on Greenmarket Square
The Museum is usually closed on a Saturday, but Esther Esmyol and Andrew Lamprecht have agreed take us through the Museum, which has been closed for many years, and explain the new re-imagination of the space. This is bound to be a very interesting morning.
Suggested FREE parking is The Annex, between the Jewish Museum and The SA National Gallery off St Johns Street/Hatfield Street … and a stroll through Company Gardens to Greenmarket Square. Alternatively, Riebeeck Square which is paid parking. Esther said she and Andrew would park in The Annex.
The tour should be 60 to 90 minutes.
We are being charged a fee which VASSA will pay.
The Museum requires a list of the names of those attending. SO PLEASE let Pat Kramer know if you will be attending. studio@iafrica.com
Since we are not sure that the speakers will talk much about the history of the actual building, here are two articles which deal with the history and architecture of the building.
A HISTORY OF THE OLD TOWN HOUSE (Iziko Museums of South Africa)
Situated in the hub of Cape Town on Greenmarket Square, the Old Town House houses the Michaelis Collection. The building was formerly the City Hall, built in 1755 in the Cape Rococo style.
Donated by Sir Max Michaelis in 1914, the Michaelis collection consists of a world-renowned selection of Netherlandish art from the seventeenth-century Golden Age. There are works by Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Jacob van Ruisdael, Anthony van Dyck and numerous others.
The role played by building and collection in the cultural life of the Mother City is enhanced by its prominent position right in its historical centre on Greenmarket Square. But this role also continues after-hours, as the popular venue for chamber-music concerts and lectures on a variety of cultural topics, meetings by cultural organisations and receptions in the Van Dyck and Frans Hals Rooms or in the intimate courtyard behind the building.
And, in addition to the permanent collections, there is a consistent flow of special, temporary exhibitions widening the scope of the museum to cater for the cultural interests of all Capetonians and tourists alike. Thus, the Michaelis Collection in the Old Town House has become a place to which to return from time to time.
History of the Michaelis Collection at the Old Town House:
This museum is one of the most exquisite little art museums in the country, both the collection and the building in which it is housed are of great aesthetic and historical importance.
The early Cape Dutch building, one of the architectural gems of the Mother City, houses a precious and internationally renowned collection of the artworks by 16th to 18th century Dutch and Flemish masters.
Situated on Greenmarket Square in the heart of old Cape Town, the Old Town House was one of the first double-storey buildings when it was erected in 1755-1761 under the governorship of the popular Rijk Tulbagh. The Cape-silver trowel with which its first stone was laid by Baerendt Artois, member of the Court of Justice, is still on view in the Museum.
With its proud three-arched portico, its gay green shutters against the white and yellow plasterwork, its exuberant moundings and fanlights and its quaint belfry the Old Town House, for all its modesty, is as endearing a little Rococo building as any found in Europe.
The Old Town House also known as the Burgher Watch House reminds one of the days that the little settlement on Table Bay became a City with its own civic pride and institutions. It served, at one time or another, as the seat of the Burgher Watch, as that of the Burgher Senate, as a magistrate’s court and as a police station. Then it became Cape Town’s City Hall which it remained until, in 1905, the City Hall on the Grand Parade was completed.
City Hall becomes art gallery:
For a while, the future of this important link with the past was uncertain. But a splendid new use for it was found as a result of the mediation of Lady Florence Phillips, wife of “Rand baron” Sir Lionel Phillips, to whose initiatives the country owes a number of fine cultural institutions. It was she who had prompted the British art collector Hugh (later Sir Hugh) Lane to assemble a collection of Netherlandish old master paintings that could one day form the nucleus of an art museum in South Africa. And when a new use was sought for Cape Town’s Old Town House, it was she who found her friend Max (later Sir Max) Michaelis prepared to purchase the Lane collection and present it to the South African Nation in 1914. Thus, he could show “his gratitude for the many happy and prosperous years … spent in this beautiful country”.
Sir Max Michaelis, whose bronze bust by sculptor Moses Kottler can be seen over the fountain in the courtyard, was a British-born Johannesburg businessman. The Michaelis Collection is not the only institution that benefited from his generosity. His name is also associated with libraries, a hospital and with the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
The City of Cape Town responded to Sir Max’s gift by making available the Old Town House and present it to the Union Government. The architect J.M. Solomon was commissioned to restore the building. He adapted its interior to its new function and gave it the appearance of a 17th century Dutch guildhall, though leaving the exterior largely as it was first built. The magnificent stairway and the panelled and beamed Frans Hals Room upstairs – once the home of the City Council – are especially worthy as a setting for the fine collection on its walls. The new art museum – the first in Cape Town – was opened to the public in 1916.
The story of Max Michaelis:
Sir Max Michaelis was born to Jewish parents in 1852 in Eisfeld, Saxe-Meiningen, Germany. He attended the commercial school in Nuremberg and afterwards sailed for South Africa where he arrived in Port Elizabeth in 1876. He then moved to Kimberley in 1878 where he rose to prominence as a diamond dealer, founding the Cape Diamond Mining Company, which was later taken over by De Beers. He later moved to Johannesburg where he became manager of the Central Mining and Investment Corporation, which conducted the business of Wernher, Beit and Co. Michaelis thus became what is termed a “Randlord”; a plutocrat whose incredible wealth was based upon his mining exploits in this country. Between 1896 and 1919 he lived in England, retaining his ties to South Africa and still working for the same firm. He returned to Cape Town in 1919, settling at Montebello in Newlands, which is today an arts centre. He made numerous gifts and benefactions, including gifts to other art museums, bursaries and the establishment of a Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town.
Michaelis’s gift of the Michaelis Collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings to the Union of South Africa in 1914 was a ploy to obtain a knighthood, unfortunately made on the eve of the First World War. Despite his gift made in 1914, his German birth precluded him from obtaining it until well after the War’s end. He was duly knighted in 1924. He eventually died in Zurich, Switzerland in 1932. His gift of the Michaelis Collection of Dutch and Flemish paintings is the most substantial gift of art made by any South African Randlord. It was substantially expanded with further gifts by his wife, Lilian, Lady Michaelis in 1933. She also made gifts to the South African National Gallery and the Pretoria Art Museum. She later founded the Lady Michaelis Orthopaedic Hospital in Plumstead, Cape Town, which has now closed. The Michaelis legacy and name lives on in many South African institutions.
The Story of the Old Town House
OLD TOWN HOUSE also Old Burgher Watch House, Greenmarket Square. (Hans Fransen)
On the site of the present building, a smaller, single-storeyed and thatched building housing the Burgher Watch had been standing since shortly after 1716. It was pulled down and the foundation stone for a new building was laid by Baerendt Artoijs, member of the Council of Justice, in 1755. In 1756 the Burgher Watch and the Burgher Council moved into the building, which was completed in 1761, at a total cost of 33 000 guilders.
One year after its completion Johannes Rach, during his short stay at the Cape, made drawings of the newly completed building, which show it very much as it is today: a two-storeyed five-bay building not unlike the ordinary dwellings erected in Cape Town during the following decades. The decorative parapet with its six vases (whether it was pierced, as has been suggested, is not known for certain) was replaced in 1808 by a plain one slightly stepped up towards the centre (a fate that befell most other Rococo parapets), and a small bell-tower was added at the same time, both by Herman Schutte.
The name of the architect of the Burgher Watch House is not known, but the sculptor Johannes Struwig from Groningen made the fine carved fanlights, almost identical, and he may well have been responsible for other decorative features such as the drip moulds over the windows. Apart from the building housing the Von Dessin Library, also sometimes called the Sexton’s House, in Adderley Street (now gone), this motif was never repeated, though it is related to the ornamental plasterwork of the Baroque gables, the development of which started about the same time. As probably one of Cape Town’s first double-storeyed buildings, and with its early Rococo-style decorations, the Old Town House may well have played a seminal role in the development of Cape architecture over the next half-century.
When a Burgher Senate was created in 1796, it held its meetings in the old Burgher Watch House. In 1804 the Cape Town coat of arms, painted on a wooden board, was affixed above the balcony door where it replaced the figure of Justice (about 1915 it was again replaced by a coat of arms in plaster relief). From 1828 to 1839 the building housed the magistrate’s court, and in 1840 when Cape Town became a municipality it became its first Town Hall; it remained so until 1905, when the present City Hall was completed. It was turned into an art gallery (housing the Michaelis Collection of old Dutch and Flemish paintings) in 1917, after adaptation by the architect JM Solomon.
Over the years the interior had been altered several times, and almost none of its original features survived. Solomon did not attempt to reconstruct them, but gave the interior the appearance of a 17th-century Dutch guildhall, as an appropriate setting for the pictures. It is a rather eclectic affair, with different styles confused and completely unlike any Cape interior, but in itself it is beautifully detailed and crafted and a fine example of the English Art and Crafts style of the late 19th century. Apart from the balustrades, the Baroque exterior of the building with its superimposed Doric and Ionic orders and tall sashes is almost as it was in 1808. The entrance portico and stoep were removed in 1902 and re-built without the stoep, with the sidewalk running through under its arcade. Solomon reconstructed the stoep and steps, but the central arch was made semicircular and thus raised and made to cut through the moulding. The attractive house with wavy parapet that had become a fire station and until c1916 adjoined the Burgher Watch House in Burg Street gave way to a small formal garden. The garden façade of the building was altered and given a spurious dakkamer.
Notes kindly put together by Pat Kramer.
_________________________________________
2026 Membership fees are due now – see here for details
_________________________________________
READ THE LATEST VASSA Newsletter JUNE 2026
or access all newsletters in Publications
____________________________________________
A GENTLE REMINDER / CODE OF CONDUCT
TALKS happen on the third Tuesday of a month, at the Athenaeum in Newlands. All are welcome, free of charge.
OUTINGS happen on the last Saturday of a month (usually). Members only.
VASSA outings/excursions usually take us onto exclusive properties, and frequently into private homes – which is a privilege deserving respect and courtesy, and our host’s privacy being safeguarded. Hence our Code of Conduct.
GENERAL
Only paid up members may attend Outings. (Visitors pay the annual price of membership to attend an outing.)
Always wear your VASSA name badge to Outings. It’s a courtesy to fellow members as well as a safety measure to hosts who generously allow us into their homes.
Strictly no pets ever, or children without prior arrangement.
ON ARRIVAL AND DEPARTURE
On arrival, make sure to sign the register which has a clause that indemnifies VASSA and/or its agents against all injury, loss, damage, costs and/or expenses which you and/or any other person may incur as a result of your participation.
Then, stay close to the leader so that the host can be introduced. Do not wander off before the introduction.
On departure, gather around the leader to thank the host. Do not leave before this.
If you have to leave before the end of the outing, inform the outing leader so that others don’t wait or look for you.
PHOTOGRAPH PROTOCOL
We need to safeguard the privacy of our hosts in this digital age.
Before taking interior photographs, check with the outing leader that this is permitted.
Although we may sometimes be allowed to take interior photos if we have permission from the property owner / occupant, we should use them only for personal or research purposes.
So do not post photographs of any interior on social media – this is deemed a security risk.
And never post images of a location / farm online with either GPS co-ordinates or the name and location / address attached, nor as a caption or other “tag” such as the “check in” option on Facebook.
Some already “public” exterior shots, such as the gateposts or gables, may be used to illustrate posts to social media or to the VASSA Facebook page.
ON THE PROPERTY
Switch off cell phones or put them on ‘silent’.
Do not … Touch anything / Pick up porcelain to check maker’s mark / Take books out of bookcases, etc. / Open closed doors / Sit on the furniture / Use the toilet without asking the host’s permission / Take plant slips from the garden.
Also do not … Engage the host in private conversations while everyone else is milling around / Use the privilege of an outing to organise private business arrangements or return visits with the host / Voice personal comments while on site.
LIMITING NUMBERS
Vassa outings are usually open for all members to attend. However, certain outings may not be able to accommodate a large group of people, in which case numbers are limited to a first come first served basis, and a contact email address is always provided to secure your spot.
If you cannot attend, let the organiser know so that someone else on the waiting list can.
____________________________________________