4- and 5-star hotels in Salt River

Salt River is a live industrial suburb, not a polished tourist district. Its draw is walls: the public art festival each February covers factories and apartment blocks around Salt River Circle, Cecil Road and Voortrekker Road with murals four and five storeys high, painted by artists from Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lagos and Europe. The suburb also has a food and drink side, from halaal takeaways on Voortrekker to a large taproom off Albert Road. Be clear-eyed about the downside: at 9pm it is dark, the pavements belong to nobody, and around the station and the circle you should be in a vehicle. There is no sea view and little green space, and freight trains shunt at odd hours.

The hotels listed here do not actually sit in Salt River. Their addresses place them in Cape Town generally, along Koeberg Road and Victoria Road, and in Milnerton and Rugby, around Lagoon Beach Drive, Lagoon Gate Drive and Burmeister Circle. Guests are therefore based at the coast or on the northern edge of the city and travel into Salt River for the murals, the food and the station footbridge. It suits couples and families who want an apartment or a full-service hotel with a pool, spa or parking, film and project workers on long stays, and anyone who wants a base to visit Salt River between 10am and 4pm rather than sleep inside it.

Getting there and around

Salt River's transport anchor is the station footbridge, from which you can watch the Southern Line peel off toward Muizenberg while the Northern Line runs east to Bellville, the busiest passenger junction in the Western Cape. The suburb itself is crossed by Albert Road, which runs continuously from Salt River Circle to the Old Biscuit Mill in about 20 minutes on flat ground, past the Salt Circle Arcade and Woodstock Brewery. After dark, the site advises using e-hails rather than walking, especially around the station and the circle, and staying in a gated property.

When to go

February is the month that matters here: the main public art festival paints new large-format murals across Salt River and lower Woodstock over roughly two weeks, with walls added each edition, so the route grows annually and older pieces sometimes disappear. The paintings themselves stay up all year, so a visit outside February still shows the walls. In summer the southeaster catches the rooftop of the Durham Avenue taproom, and the best light for the west-facing murals is between 9am and noon.