A former Johannesburg prison, closed in 1983, where South Africa's Constitutional Court opened on 21 March 2004.
Culture and institutions
The entrance wall of the Constitutional Court on Constitution Hill, 2007. Photo: André-Pierre from Stellenbosch, South Africa., CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Sources beyond UNESCO and Wikipedia: 2 (2 primary). Check each source's status in the list at the end of the card. It was published without a prior review by people from the place. If something is wrong or missing, tell the project.
This card keeps two kinds of knowledge apart: what the documented record says, and what the people who know the place say. Each is labelled, so a reader always knows which one they are reading.
In the record cited to a source
From people who know this place one person's experience, shown as theirs
Constitution Hill is a precinct in Johannesburg that opened in 1893 as a prison and closed in 1983. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it was revamped to become a museum, and in 2004 the Constitutional Court opened its doors there.[1]
Kind
Former prison precinct, museum and Constitutional Court[2][1]
The prison doors to the Old Fort and to Number Four were officially closed on 31 January 1983.[2]
A total of 156 people, among them Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo, were arrested and held at the complex before the Treason Trial of 1956.[2] In 1958 some 2,000 women, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela and Albertina Sisulu among them, were detained after protesting the pass laws.[2]
A court on the site of a prison
In the mid-1990s the site was identified as the home of the new Constitutional Court.[2] On Human Rights Day, 21 March 2004, the Constitutional Court was inaugurated, and Constitution Hill opened to the public the next day.[2]
Not yet sourced
Who built the Old Fort and why, and what the Women's Jail and the Awaiting Trial Block were. The site's history page does not say.
The prisoners' own accounts. The page names well-known detainees and numbers; the voices of ordinary prisoners are the part a visitor most needs, and this card does not have them.
What the Constitutional Court has decided and how the building was designed. Neither is covered by the sources read.
Whether and how it can be visited, guided tours and opening times. The site's pages were read for history only.
The coordinates are Wikipedia's for the precinct, not an entrance.
Sources
Primary source[1] Constitution Hill through time. Constitution Hill (Johannesburg). www.constitutionhill.org.zaretrieved 8 Oct 2026 The site's timeline page, read as text; its interactive timeline was not read.
Primary source[2] The history of Constitution Hill. Constitution Hill (Johannesburg). www.constitutionhill.org.zaretrieved 8 Oct 2026 The site's own history page. It does not say who built the Old Fort or give details of the Women's Jail.
