Choose your base in Cape Town

Safe, polished, expensive harbour precinct with the Robben Island ferry, Zeitz MOCAA and more restaurants than you can eat through.

The real centre: Long and Bree Street, Bo-Kaap, Company's Garden and Table Mountain looming over every intersection.

Dense, walkable, unpretentious seaboard suburb with a three-kilometre promenade, a tidal pool and the best value on the Atlantic coast.

Palm-lined white sand under the Twelve Apostles, with the loudest sunset strip in Cape Town and prices to match.

Four sheltered coves below the most expensive real estate in Africa, reached by long stairways and no parking whatsoever.

A working fishing harbour and a wide grey beach in a mountain bowl, twenty minutes past Camps Bay and half the price.

Oak-lined lanes, 340-year-old wine estates and serious restaurants, twenty minutes from the city and a world away from it.

Wettest, greenest suburb in the city: oaks, cricket, forest trails up Table Mountain's back, and almost nothing open after ten.

Cheapest beds in the inner city: Victorian terraces, student bars on Lower Main, hospital shift workers, and a genuine late-night pulse.

Converted warehouses, serious galleries and Saturday market crowds on Albert Road, wrapped around a rough, unromantic working suburb.

Rail junction, textile factories and the city's biggest mural wall: cheapest beds in Cape Town, and no pretence of prettiness.

Walkable Atlantic-side base between the stadium, the park and the promenade, with the CBD and Waterfront both fifteen minutes on foot.

Naval town on False Bay with Victorian shopfronts, the Boulders penguin colony next door, and Cape Point half an hour south.

Working fishing harbour, antique shops and tidal pools on one narrow street, with the train running along the water's edge.

Beginner surf beach, rainbow bathing boxes and cheap guesthouses 25 km south of the city on warm False Bay water.

Oak-shaded Cape Dutch town 50 km east of Cape Town: 150 wine farms, 20,000 students and the best mid-range eating in the Winelands.

One expensive, extremely pretty street at the head of a closed valley, with the country's densest run of fine-dining restaurants.

Working Winelands town under three granite domes: cheaper beds than Stellenbosch, good farms, and an unglamorous 11 km main street.

Comfortable, unexciting Helderberg town between the vineyards and the Strand beach, halfway between Cape Town, the winelands and the whales.

Old fishing town 120 km east of Cape Town where southern right whales come within metres of the cliff path between June and December.

Scattered self-catering village on the Kogelberg coast with a mainland penguin colony, a botanic garden and no streetlights.

Turquoise lagoon 120 km north of the city: kitesurfing, spring flowers, cheap winter rooms, and almost nothing open after 21:00.

Leafy student suburb under Devil's Peak: UCT, the Baxter Theatre, oak streets, cheap guesthouses, and nothing much open past ten.

The southern suburbs' commercial centre: malls, offices, cricket at Newlands, oak-lined upper streets and easy access to Kirstenbosch.

Two suburbs in one: cobbled Chelsea Village cottages above Main Road, and the metro's busiest bus terminus below it.