Port Elizabeth Excursions
Grahamstown Arts Festival
Grahamstown
The historic settler town of Grahamstown, 78 miles (125km)
northeast of Port Elizabeth, is presided over, from the top of
Gunfire Hill, by the 1820 Settler's National Monument, an arts and
theatre complex which forms the focus of the town's annual
internationally recognised Arts Festival held in July. Grahamstown
was founded in 1815 as a garrison to drive the Xhosa eastwards
across the Fish River frontier, giving rise to a century of
frontier war. The town has an English colonial flavour, and is home
to the renowned Rhodes University and some top private boarding
schools. There are several museums, including the JLB Smith
Institute of Ichthyology where two stuffed specimens of the
coelacanth are on display. The town also boasts the only Victorian
camera obscura in the southern hemisphere.
Website: www.grahamstown.co.za
