The Southern Sun Cape Sun hotel is once again a destination of choice

While some of its contemporaries have suffered from inner-city neglect, the Southern Sun Cape Sun hotel has bounced back in elegance and style, writes Brian Berkman.

- Brian Berkman

In its day, the Carlton Hotel in central Johannesburg offered the finest hospitality and, literally and figuratively, stood way above its competitors. Everything it offered was acclaimed. However, inner-city decay eroded its glamour and, ultimately, its doors were shut and its wares sold off piecemeal. Durban's The Royal Hotel suffered a similar fate.

The Southern Sun Cape Sun hotel on the Mother City's Strand Street added high glamour to the already thriving Golden Acre precinct of the 1980s when it was built. It was connected to Cape Town's train station and the bus depot through a series of concourses. For a time this was Cape Town's answer to an underground railway.

When financial hard times hit and the high-end boutiques moved elsewhere (to the V&A Waterfront precinct, for example), the inner city suffered.

Today, the Cape Sun is quite different from how it once was, when the Palm Court had many palm trees that made it exotic and lush, and vast brass chandeliers illuminated the plush banquettes and elegant armchair seating.

When the Cape Sun was built, it celebrated what was good about the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Yellowwood was used throughout, and the ground floor breakfast and buffet lunch spot, Riempies, referenced the leather thongs used as seating in Cape Dutch furniture.

The grand and elegant Tastevin restaurant was on the first floor, a Roman-style villa was recreated as the hotel's acclaimed dinner-anddancing venue, and some steps below the lobby area, The Noon Gun bar invoked the interior of a VOC ship.

CITY IMPROVEMENT