Windhoek Audio Tours

Windhoek sits at 1,700 metres on the Khomas Highlands plateau, roughly in the geographic centre of Namibia, a position that gives it an expansive quality and a clarity of light that photographers notice immediately. The city developed around a hot spring where Jonker Afrikaner of the Orlam people settled in 1840, but the urban form it has today was largely laid down after 1890 when Imperial German Army Major Curt von Francois established a garrison here during German colonial rule, which ended only in 1915. The legacy is visible in several Wilhelmine buildings on Robert Mugabe Avenue and Leutwein Street, including the Christuskirche, a Lutheran church completed in 1910 in an idiosyncratic art nouveau blend that looks like nothing else in Southern Africa.

Namibia achieved independence in 1990 after a long struggle against South African administration, and Windhoek became the capital of one of the youngest nations in the world, a country of exceptional natural landscapes and only 2.

5 million people spread over a territory the size of Texas. The city is clean, well-organised, and has an unhurried quality that differs fundamentally from most African capitals. The National Museum at the Alte Feste, a German-era fort, provides the colonial and independence context. The Post Street Mall in the centre has craftwork and local art, and the evening braai culture in the suburb of Katutura, the township established under apartheid-era forced removals, reflects the African character that German architecture and colonial history sit on top of.