Hector Pieterson Museum
The museum is named after one of the first casualties of the march through Soweto on 16 June 1976, when police were ordered to shoot at a crowd of demonstrating students. Sam Nzima's photograph of the mortally wounded Hector Pieterson carried by a horrified youngster and his wailing sister came to symbolise the contribution of the youth to the liberation struggle. The museum is next to the Hector Pieterson Memorial, and the whole area has been declared a national heritage site.

Visitors move along a series of ramps and look through strategically placed windows at important scenes - including Orlando Stadium and the police station - and view exhibits such as television footage of the uprising. Participants and witnesses are invited to record their own experiences of the day. Knowledgeable tour guides include Hector's sister, Antoinette Sithole.

Visitor info
8288 Khumalo Street, Orlando West
Tel and fax: 011 536 0611
Open: Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5pm, Sunday from 10am to 4pm
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Museum Africa
Museum Africa, Johannesburg's major history and cultural history museum, is housed in the Newtown Cultural Precinct's old fruit and vegetable market - which was built in 1913 and has now been imaginatively converted into a modern building. A huge collection of objects, paintings and photographs has been collected since 1935, telling the story of South Africa.

The permanent displays show urban life in Johannesburg and its place in South Africa's complex history, with themes such as work as a gold miner, home in a shack and township jazz. A striking display is of the 1956 Treason Trial, during which Nelson Mandela and 155 others were imprisoned at the Johannesburg Fort. They were acquitted of treason after four years.

Other displays depict early man, stone and iron age communities, San rock art in a reconstructed shelter and the lifestyle of the first white settlers in the Johannesburg area. Also in MuseuMAfricA is the Bensusan Museum of Photography.

Visitor info
121 Bree Street, Newtown, Johannesburg
Tel: 011 833 5624
Fax 011 833 5636
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Open: Tuesdays to Sundays 9am - 5pm. Closed on Good Friday, Christmas Day and 26 December.
There is guarded parking in Mary Fitzgerald Square opposite the entrance. Tours for schools and adult groups can be booked through the education department.

Services
The Public Research Section & Image Resource Centre is open Tuesdays to Fridays, 9am to 1pm, for enquiries about the museum. The souvenir shop sells books and a range of unusual items. The coffee shop serves reasonably priced light meals. The Friends of MuseumAfrica offers extra activities to its members.
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James Hall Museum of Transport
The James Hall Museum of Transport, the largest and most comprehensive land-transport museum in South Africa, was established by the late Jimmie Hall and the City of Johannesburg in February 1964. The museum shows land transport in all its forms: ox-wagons, coaches and carts, bicycles, motorbikes, tractors, fire engines, buses, trams, trains and cars - from the Model T Ford to electric cars.

Visitor info
Rosettenville Road, La Rochelle, Pioneers Park
Tel 011 435 9485/6/7
Fax 011 435 9821
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Website: www.jhmt.org.za
Open: Tuesdays to Sundays 9am to 5pm. Closed on Good Friday, Christmas Day and 26 December
There is no admission charge, but donations are welcome

Services
Tours for schools or interest groups can be arranged, as well as rides on some of the museum vehicles. Booking is essential.

Friends of James Hall Museum of Transport
The Friends of the Museum helps raise funds and maintains the museum and its vehicles.
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Kliptown Museum
The story  the Kliptown Open Air Museum tells of the thousands of people who contributed to the drafting of the Freedom Charter through photographs, news clippings, art, song and narration. Artefacts from those people who witnessed the signing of the charter are on display, while oral testimonies and songs sung during the 1955 gathering in Kliptown, play in the background.

Visitor info
Walter Sisulu Square, corner Union Avenue and Main Road, Kliptown
Tel: 011 022 1182/5574
Cell: 082 454 3354
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Open: Mondays to Fridays 10am to 4pm

The Workers’ Museum
The exhibition, focusing on the years from the early 1900s to the 1970s, reveals the hardships faced by migrant workers. The museum shows the slave-like conditions the workers had to endure, depicted in the museum's permanent exhibition, which includes the original dormitories, concrete bunks and punishment room. Sections of the compound are now used as meeting rooms and there is a small library with books related to labour history and socialist theory. The museum is housed in the restored west wing, while the east wing is a temporary space for exhibitions and community gatherings.

Visitor info
52 Jeppe Street, Newtown
Tel:  011 336 9190
Website:  www.workersmuseum.org.za
Open:  Tuesdays to Sundays 9am to 5pm

Bensusan Museum of Photography and Library
The Bensusan Museum of Photography is named after Dr AD Bensusan, a former mayor of Johannesburg and a man who has devoted himself to promoting the art and science of photography in this country. It was donated to the city in 1968.

The collection includes rare and valuable precision-made photographic equipment. For example, a very early Daguerre camera - bought by his English rival, WH Fox Talbot, in 1839, the year that the invention of photography was announced to the world - is on display. The collector's gallery shows how, one-by-one, seemingly impossible obstacles to photography's evolution were solved by ingenious engineering solutions.

The museum also collects the pictures made using this equipment - from the earliest wet-plate prints, to experiments in 3D such as stereoscopic views and holograms, to digital images.

The museum also specialises in preserving the work of South African photographers. Along the way interactive toys, darkrooms and multimedia shows teach basic lessons in the principles of optics, light and the moving image, and the fundamentals of photography

Visitor info
Bensusan Museum is in MuseuMAfricA, at 121 Bree Street, Newtown, Johannesburg
Tel 011 833 5624
Fax 011 833 5636
Open: Tuesdays to Sundays 9am to 5pm. Closed on Good Friday, Christmas Day and 26 December

Services
The extensive library has works on everything about photography and photographers and lends books to amateurs, students and professionals. Bring your ID to register. Leading photographic magazines are always on display.
The library is open Tuesday, Thursday and Friday 10am to 2pm
Wednesday 10am to 4:30pm, Saturday 9am to 1pm
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Roodepoort Museum
The Roodepoort Museum is a local community museum, which covers the development of Roodepoort from mining camp to city and the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand. Friendly guides recount the discovery of gold in the area and the development of villages and towns.

The museum boasts a pioneer farmhouse dating from the mid-1800s, a Victorian house from the turn of the century, plus 1920s and 1930s lounges reflecting life in a bygone era. A special display room houses the museum's collection of international decorative art objects. A temporary exhibition gallery has changing displays of local interest.

Visitor info
Civic Centre, Christiaan de Wet Road, Florida Park
Tel: 011 761 0226
Fax: 011 674 4043
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Web: www.rooderportinfo.co.za
Open by appointment only.
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Constitution Hill Museum
Constitution Hill, the site of Johannesburg's notorious Old Fort prison complex, has now become a major tourist attraction. Prime attractions include the Old Fort; Number Four, the infamous black men's prison; and the adjacent Constitutional Court, the highest court in the country. Here visitors can attend hearings and view an impressive art collection.

The old prison cells have been converted into an interactive museum with a state-of-the-art audiovisual system that shows footage of former prisoners recounting their experiences. Photographs and prison artefacts - including recreations of the blanket and soap sculptures made by the inmates - help capture the rich heritage of the site.

Visitor info
Corner Kotze and Hospital streets, Braamfontein
Tel: 011 381 3100
Website: www.constitutionhill.org.za
Open: Every day from 9am to 5pm (but closed Christmas Day and Good Friday)
There are tours every half an hour. Tours of more than 10 people need to be booked 24 hours in advance by phoning 011 381 3100
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Apartheid Museum
The Apartheid Museum, which opened in November 2001, offers a multi-media, multi-sensory walk through the history of apartheid. It has been critically acclaimed in South Africa and abroad.

A team of filmmakers, historians, designers, architects and curators have crafted a dramatic and moving experience for the museum's visitors. Tickets are plastic cards that indicate "white" or "non-white"; footage of police vehicles driving through the township can be viewed from a Casspir itself; and 121 nooses hang from the roof, representing political prisoners executed during the apartheid years.

The experience, however, is largely audiovisual. Film and video footage collected from around the world documents the history of South Africa under apartheid - from the building of Afrikaner nationalism and life in the townships, to black and white resistance to this iniquitous system. Visitors can leave their own historical artefacts - passbooks, for example - and photographs, and record their experiences under apartheid.

Visitor info
Cnr Northern Parkway and Gold Reef Rd, Ormonde
Tel: 011 309 4700
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Website: www.apartheidmuseum.org
Open: Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to 5pm
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South African National Museum of Military History
The Museum of Military History offers adults a fascinating look at all forms of war vehicles and weapons. And it will captivate children with the visual spectacle of its displays, from planes to trains. Tours are provided for schools and military groups; other visitors can make their way around the exhibits themselves.The museum has a collection of more than 44 000 items, divided into 37 separate categories, including official South African war art.

Visitor info
22 Erlswold Way, Saxonwold
Tel: 011 646 5513
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Website: www.militarymuseum.co.za
Open daily from 9am to 4:30pm except Good Friday and Christmas Day
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The Origins Centre
The Origins Centre is the world's only museum dedicated to exploring and celebrating the history of modern humankind. The first phase of the museum showcases the origins of humankind as well as an extensive collection of rock art from the Wits Art Research Institute. Many of the exhibits bring to life the heritage of the San, whose DNA contains the earliest genetic print, linking them to the Homo sapiens who lived 160 000 years ago. There are breathtaking exhibits of rock art, accompanied by narratives, as well as an exhibit showing how genetic testing contributes to understanding our ancestry. The museum is in the Wedge in Yale Road and is open Tuesdays to Thursdays 9am to 6pm, Fridays 9am to 8pm, and Saturdays and Sundays 9am to 5pm.

Visitor info
Address: The Wedge Complex, University of Witwatersrand, Corner Yale Road and Jorissen Street, Braamfontein
Tel: 011 717 4700/4703/4704
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Website: www.origins.org.za
Hours: Tuesday to Thursday 9am to 6pm; Friday 9am to 8pm; Saturday and Sunday 10am to 5pm.

Mandela House
The Mandela Museum in Soweto is housed in what was once the home of Nelson Mandela, the world's most famous political prisoner and South Africa's former president. Soweto was an important locus of the struggle against apartheid, and Mandela's house seems an appropriate site for a museum that charts the long, hard-fought path to democracy.

Visitor info
8115 Ngakane Str, Orlando West, Soweto Tel: 011 936 7754 Open: Every day from 9:30am to 5pm
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Gold Reef City
Gold Reef City is a re-creation of turn-of-the-century Johannesburg, which was flooded by prospectors after the discovery of gold in 1886. With its Victorian houses and geological displays, it offers many fascinating insights into life in Johannesburg long before the technological age. In the centre of Gold Reef City stands Shaft No 14, opened in 1887 and closed after 84 years of operation in 1971.

Underground tours take visitors beneath the surface to see original mining techniques as well as more modern methods. Back on the surface you can watch gold being poured, be shown around by a multilingual guide in period costume and even order a drink in the world's deepest pub

George Harrison Park
George Harrison and the history of Johannesburg are closely bound together: it was he who first found gold in 1886, a discovery that gave rise to the largest and most vibrant city in South Africa. The original 10-stamp battery mill that was used to crush the ore on site has been removed and is on display in the mining district in Main Street, in downtown Johannesburg. On view are two original shafts and sweeping views of the city.

Visitor info
Main Reef Rd, Langlaagte
Open: dawn to dusk
The park is locked but entrance can be arranged by phoning 011 375 5555. It is wise to go to the park in a group