By Air

Today Kimberley Airport (IATA: KIM, ICAO: FAKM) services the area, with regular scheduled flights from Cape Town and Johannesbusg.South African aviation originated in Kimberley, which is commemorated in the Pioneers of Aviation Museum (and replica of the first Compton Patterson Biplane preserved there).In the 1930s Kimberley boasted the best night-landing facilities on the continent of Africa.A major air rally was hosted there in 1934.In the war years Kimberley Airport was commandeered by the Union Defence Force and run by the 21 Flying School for the training of fighter pilots.

By Train

The railway reticulation eventually would link Kimberley with Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg, Durban and Bloemfontein.The major junction at De Aar in the Karoo linked early twentieth century lines to Upington (later to Namibia) and to Calvinia.From the 1990s there was a decline in the use of the railways.Today passenger train services to and from Kimberley are provided by Spoornet's Shosholoza Meyl, with connections south to Cape Town and Port Elizabeth and north to Johannesburg.Luxury railway experiences are provided on the main north-south line by the Blue Train and Rovos Rail.

By Road

Wagon and coach routes were developed rapidly as the rush for the Diamond Fields gathered momentum.Two of the major routes were from the Cape and from Port Elizabeth, the nearest maritime port at the time.Contemporary accounts of the 1870s describe the appalling condition of some of the roads and decry the absence of bridges.From the mid 1880s the route through Kimberley and Mafeking (now Mahikeng) became the main axis of British colonial penetration and it was from Kimberley, along that route, that the Pioneer Column for the settlement of Rhodesia set forth in 1890.Today, however, the central arterial route to the north, the N1 from the Cape to Johannesburg, goes via Bloemfontein, not Kimberley.Kimberley is located at the intersection of the N12 and N8 national roads.

McGregor Museum, William Humphreys Art Gallery, St Cyprian's Cathedral, Big Hole and Open Mine Museum, South African Air Force Museum

McGregor Museum

Originally known as the Alexander McGregor Memorial Museum, is a province-aided museum established in 1907.Today the museum has its headquarters at the old Kimberley Sanatorium building in Belgravia, Kimberley, and it has several satellites including the original building in Chapel Street.The museum opened its doors on 24 September 1907.By coincidence 24 September was chosen as Heritage Day, a public holiday in South Africa post-1994.The museum houses major natural history and cultural history collections including a botanical herbarium, zoology collections, a history archive (including documents, photographs and oral history recordings), ethnography collections, archaeology and rock art collections, physical anthropology, palaeontology and geology collections. Most of these fields are represented by professional staff and collection managers, and the collections and associated research programmes are reflected in permanent and temporary exhibits in various sections and buildings of the museum as well as in outreach programmes in the province and displays in smaller museums.

William Humphreys Art Gallery

The William Humphreys Art Gallery, in Kimberley, South Africa, was opened in 1952 and named after its principal benefactor, William Benbow Humphreys (1889 - 1965).More recently the Meyer Collection of European and Oriental Porcelain and the Lawson Collection of Old Master Drawings and Prints have been acquired.At present the William Humphreys Art Gallery concentrates on collecting South African works of art, and has built up an important art reference library. Additional to its collecting and exhibiting functions, the William Humphreys Art Gallery serves as an educational and cultural centre, with an outreach programme taking exhibitions to rural towns in the Northern Cape.

St Cyprian's Cathedral

The Cathedral Church of St Cyprian the Martyr, Kimberley, is the seat of the Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman, Anglican Church of Southern Africa.It became a Cathedral when the Synod of Bishops gave a mandate for the formation of the new Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman in October 1911.The first Bishop, the Rt Revd Wilfrid Gore Browne, was enthroned there on 30 June 1912. But the Parish of St Cyprian dates back to at least 1871 when a chapelry within the Parish of All Saints, Du Toits Pan, Diocese of Bloemfontein, was dedicated and met in a tent in New Rush, on the Diamond Fields - the digger settlement which would become Kimberley.

Big Hole and Open Mine Museum

At the western side of the Big Hole is the Open Mine Museum.Consisting of original and carefully reconstructed buildings this museum has preserved a great deal of the city's past.The Eureka, the first recorded diamond discovered in South Africa, can be viewed at the museum.Have some fun sifting through diamond bearing gravel, looking for your own diamond.Experience a diamond mining operation - complete with blastings! Play skittles in the old bowling alley, or just stroll through the old buildings which have been reconstructed here at the museum.

South African Air Force Museum

Exhibits and restores material related to the history of the South African Air Force.The Museum is divided into three locations, AFB Swartkop outside Pretoria, AFB Ysterplaat in Cape Town and at the Port Elizabeth airport.AFB Swartkop is the largest of the three museum locations, occupying at least five hangars.It contains a number of Atlas Cheetahs as well as a Cheetah C flight simulator.Active restoration are being performed on a number of Harvards and there is a project to restore an Airspeed Oxford.One of the more unusual exhibits is a Jorg IV Skimmerfoil ground effect craft.

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