Bloemfontein

Situated at an altitude of 1,395 m above sea level, the city is home to approximately 520,000 residents and forms part of the Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality which has a population of 747,431.

The city of Bloemfontein hosts the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the Franklin Game Reserve, Naval Hill, the Maselspoort Resort and the Sand du Plessis Theatre.

The city hosts numerous museums, including the National Women's Monument, the Anglo-Boer War Museum, the National Museum, and the Oliewenhuis Art Museum Bloemfontein also host sub-Saharan Africa's first digital planetarium, the Naval Hill Planetarium and Boyden Observatory, an astronomical research observatory erected by Harvard University.

Bloemfontein is popularly and poetically known as "the city of roses", for its abundance of these flowers and the annual rose festival held there. The city's Sesotho name is Mangaung, meaning "place of cheetahs". Its! Wikipedia

Bloemfontein was founded in 1846 and now has a population of around half a million people.

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings was born in Bloemfontein in 1892.

In 1923, the African National Congress (ANC) political party was founded in Bloemfontein.

Today, Bloemfontein is a compact city surrounded by sprawling suburbs.

Happily, the city centre is safe to walk around during the day, but many of the city's activities are focused on the Waterfront and Mimosa malls and on the large sporting complex. Second Avenue, north of the Waterfront mall, has the majority of the city's bars and restaurants.