City Hall holds a century of Cape Town's public life

CAPE Town City Hall has stood at the edge of the Grand Parade for 119 years, its honey-coloured stone and clock tower a familiar mark on the city skyline and a witness to some of the country's most important moments.

- STAFF REPORTER

Completed in 1905, it was the last Victorian building to rise in Cape Town. Architects Harry Austin Reid and Frederik George Green won a public design competition, and contractors T Howard and FG Scott carried out the construction. The limestone was shipped from Bath in England. The tower's clock and bells were modelled on London's Big Ben, with clock faces cast in iron and filled with opal thought to have come from Australia.