Tuynhuys

Tuynhuys is a two-story building in central Cape Town defined by its white walls, decorative gables, and symmetrical rows of windows overlooking the Company’s Gardens. While it now serves as the office of the President of South Africa, its origins were far more humble. In sixteen seventy-four, the Dutch East India Company constructed a simple toolshed on this site to store equipment for their gardens. By sixteen eighty-two, that structure had been converted into a guesthouse for visitors, beginning a long evolution that saw it enlarged and refined by successive colonial governors.