The Cape Town Club occupies a Sir Herbert Baker building at 18 Queen Victoria Street, on the edge of the Company's Garden in the city's Gardens district. Founded in 1858, it spent decades as a closed-door establishment, fell quiet in 2017, and reopened in November 2024 as a members club that finally lets some daylight in.
Who would love it: a traveller who wants heritage Cape Town with a whisky in hand, a cigar in the lounge, and live jazz down the corridor. Who might not: anyone after a quick walk-in pint, because the heart of this place, the Members' Bar, stays members only.
The reboot is the reason it earns a listing now. Cape Town ETC, surveying the city's private clubs, confirmed that the club reopened in November 2024 after years dormant, repositioned for a broader and more diverse membership than its colonial-era past. The tagline the management uses, exclusive by design and inclusive by nature, is a deliberate break from the institution that drafted parts of the country's history behind locked doors.
Priya Nair's read: treat this as two venues stacked inside one landmark. The Members' Bar is the social core, a cigar lounge with deep Chesterfields and a humidor, reserved for members and their guests. The Mara Lounge runs cocktails and live jazz into the late evening, also for members. For everyone else, Victoria's Cafe is open to the public, and The Gallery restaurant serves modern Cape cooking with Table Mountain framed in the windows.
The building does a great deal of the talking. Designed by Herbert Baker and occupied from 1898, its rooms have hosted pivotal national moments, including Jan Smuts drafting the 1939 declaration of war, per the club's own history. Women were admitted as members from 1979. A grand salon, a library of historic volumes, and a ballroom sit alongside the bar, which is rare company for a drink.
What to order depends on which door opens for you. In the Members' Bar the ritual is a classic cocktail or a whisky paired with a cigar from the humidor. In the Mara Lounge it is a cocktail with the resident jazz programme. At Victoria's Cafe, the public entry point, a coffee or an aperitif is the honest order, since there is no published signature drink list and we will not invent one.
Access is the detail every visitor should understand before arriving. The named bar is not a public room. Non-members reach the building through the cafe, through a booking at The Gallery, through one of the club's events, or as an overnight guest, since the club lets a handful of rooms. Booking partners list those rooms from roughly 86 US dollars a night, which is the simplest way for a curious visitor to get inside the walls.
Best time to go: an early evening, when the light drops over the Company's Garden and the lounge settles into its rhythm. Members describe a programme that runs well beyond drinks, with jazz nights, salons, lectures, and the occasional drag brunch, which signals how far the place has moved from its starched origins.
Public opening hours are not reliably published, so confirm directly before a visit. The club takes calls on +27 21 001 4409, and the cafe and dining rooms keep their own schedules separate from the members spaces.
It earns a place among the city's most distinctive heritage rooms on the strength of the building, the cigar lounge, and a reopening that genuinely changed who gets to walk in. See where Cape Town's grandest bars sit in our guide to the best bars in Cape Town, and browse the wider Cape Town cocktail bars shortlist for rooms you can book tonight.
Pair this bar with
For another wood-panelled drink with serious spirits, compare Bascule Whisky Bar Cape Town. For heritage-hotel grandeur a short walk up the hill, try Planet Bar at Mount Nelson Cape Town. And for a proper cocktail den in the City Bowl, Orphanage Cocktail Emporium Cape Town makes the natural next stop.
Sources
The Cape Town Club official site · Cape Town ETC · Tripadvisor (accessed 2026-06) · Cape Town Central City Improvement District
Reviewed by Priya Nair, barsforKings. Published Jan 27, 2026. Last reviewed Mar 3, 2026.
