Noon Day Gun, Cape Town / Up on Signal Hill at 12:00 exactly every day, a cannon is fired. Accurate to the nearest millisecond ...

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NOON DAY GUN, CAPE TOWN

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Noon Gun, Cape Town: Up on Signal Hill at 12:00 exactly every day, a cannon is fired. Accurate to the nearest millisecond, it booms over the Mother City, Table Mountain in the background, yet never ceases to surprise even long-term Capetonians, and certainly has visitors looking anxious.

The daily noon gun (cannon) is not only Cape Town’s oldest living tradition, but the guns used (there are two of them, just in case one of them fails) are two of the oldest in the world still in daily use. This tradition has managed, somehow, to survive a Dutch then a British colony; a resurgence of Dutch control, British expansion, the Anglo-Boer War, the rise and fall of apartheid and the subsequent new democracy, and is still used by which to set one’s watch. Today it is fired electronically from The South African Astronomical Observatory, in Observatory and its accuracy comes from an atomic clock.

As early as 1806, the Noon Day gun was used as a time signal for ships anchored in Table Bay and the cannon was fired from the Castle of Good Hope. It was moved in 1902 to its present position, where it overlooks Cape Town, the harbour and Table Bay. But every Capetonian, pocket watches being scarce and inaccurate - if you didn’t remember to wind them, you were without the time - came to rely on the blast as a means to tell the time. In those days, time was loosely divided into four parts - day, night, morning and afternoon, and travellers from the mother city would be expected to provide the correct ‘gun time’.

Today it is yet another of those little idiosyncrasies that sets Cape Town apart and makes her such an exciting place to visit, and you can watch the daily ritual up on Signal Hill at Lion Battery, from 11:30 (except on Sundays or public holidays).

Overnight Cape Town Central Accommodation or hotels Cape Town Central

BO KAAP

Accommodation Bo Kaap

Bo-Kaap: The Bo-Kaap, which lies on the fringes of Cape Town’s city centre, is full of character and colourful houses (pink, orange, lime green and turquoise), many of which are national monuments and date back to the 1750s, with cobbled streets that rise up to meet the lower slopes of Signal Hill on ... more about ť Bo-Kaap

SIGNAL HILL

Signal Hill: Signal Hill, which connects Kloof Nek to Lion’s Head, in the distinctive shape of a lion’s rump, is one of the most famous spots in Cape Town for sundowners. Views from the 350m high summit are nothing short of spectacular, particularly at night, and picnic dinners with accompanying drinks ... more about ť Signal Hill

CASTLE OF GOOD HOPE

Castle of Good Hope: The oldest building in South Africa is a symbol of the birth of Western civilization on the subcontinent. The castle was completed in 1679 with the aim of protecting the new settlement from possible attack (it never materialised). The William Fehr Collection of Africana provides ... Castle of Good Hope

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Noon Day Gun, Cape Town / Up on Signal Hill at 12:00 exactly every day, a cannon is fired. Accurate to the nearest millisecond

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