The Huguenot Memorial Museum and Monument | Attraction

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This monument commemorates the arrival at the Cape in 1688 of some 270 Huguenot refugees. They were among thousands of Protestants who had fled religious persecution in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Invited by the Voc they settled in the Cape, the majority in the Drakenstein Valley.

The central feature of the Huguenot Memorial is a female figure holding a Bible in her right hand and a broken chain in the left. Symbolizing the freedom of religion, she casts off the cloak of oppression and spiritually free, stands poised above the globe with her feet in France.

Today our constitution enshrines everyone's right to freedom of religion, thought, belief and opinion.

The adjacent museum opened in 1967 chrnicles the history of the Huguenot pioneers. The museum is housed in a replica of the Saasveld homestead, which was demolished in Cape Town in 1950's.

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