City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality
— the city the jacarandas turn purple in October.
Not only on a wall.
“Johannesburg sits high on the Highveld, more than seventeen hundred metres up, on the seam of gold that pulled the city out of the veld in 1886. In late October the jacarandas come in, whole streets turning purple for a few weeks before the summer rains. Locals call it Egoli, the place of gold. The light at altitude is famously clear.
City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and the seat of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, with a population near six million across roughly 1,645 square kilometres. The city sits on the Highveld plateau at about 1,753 metres above sea level, a thousand metres higher than Pretoria to its north. Founded in 1886 after gold was struck on the Witwatersrand reef, the camp grew into the financial centre of the continent within a generation. Locals call it Joburg, or by its isiZulu name, Egoli.
For about six weeks each spring, from mid-October into November, the jacaranda canopy turns the older suburbs purple. The trees were brought from South America in the late nineteenth century and now line streets through Houghton, Westcliff, and the inner ring. University students time graduations against the bloom, and lore holds that any exam not studied for before the first purple petal falls is lost. By late November the petals carpet the pavements and summer thunderstorms move in from the west most afternoons.
Most visitors arrive through O.R. Tambo International Airport, the busiest airport in Africa, and stay in Rosebank or Sandton. The two anchor sites for a first visit are Constitution Hill, the former fort and prison that now houses the Constitutional Court, and the Apartheid Museum in Ormonde, which opened in 2001. A guided trip into Soweto fills a full day; Vilakazi Street holds the only block in the world where two Nobel laureates once lived, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu.