Around Church Square are several buildings built in the late 1800s style: Raadsaal (Council Hall of the Zuid-Afrikaanche Republiek), Palace of Justice, now home of the Supreme Court, Post Office, old Reserve Bank.
Sammy Marks Museum is a Victorian period house of a sumptious lifestyle. Paul Kruger museum is in the house of President Paul Kruger of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek. Melrose House, built in 1886, is an example of Victorian lifestyle. Pretora Art Museum hosts paintings of South African artists. The Pierneef Museum has an exhibit of the artist Pierneef. Van Wouw House was the home of sculptor Anton van Wouw, and exhibits some of his work. The Museum of Science and Technology has exhibits in which visitors can participate. Pretoria Zoo (the National Zoological Gardens) is the largest zoo in South Africa and with an aquarium. At the State Theatre, consisting of several theatres, productions range from opera and jazz to ballet, drama and cabaret.

In the Wonderboom Nature Reserve, just north of the Pretoria Zoo, is a giant fig tree of about 1'000 years old, and which grows over an area of 0,5Ha.

Along the rest of the coast, from Port Elizabeth up to Natal, summer is the wetter time, with showers and thunderstorms about every third day on average from October to March. Temperatures warm as you go north, although beachgoers from Miami or Mykonos may find it chilly. Even in January, its warmest month, the KwaZulu Natal coast often stays below 280C/820F by day, although its nights are balmy. The Great Karoo and Drakensberg mountains separate wetter coast from the quite and interior.
On occasion KwaZulu Natal gets a heavy round of spring or autumn rains. The mountains of Lesotho are usually hammered with a few big snows each winter, and nights tend to be frosty all along the Drakensbergs, although the bright afternoons often warm above 100C/500F.
In summer, the region from Lesotho northwards gets thunderstorms almost every day - sometimes wild ones that drop serious hailstones (they can be bigger than golf balls) and, on rare occasions a tornado. The afternoon storms usually move east across the Highveld reaching Pretoria and Johannesburg by evening, but seldom making it as far as the Lowveld that extends into Swaziland. The Lowveld gets hot, humid summers - most afternoons soar well above 300C/860F - but pleasantly mild winters, with warm afternoons and nights that are chilly but usually frost-free.Despite their closeness to each other, Johannesburg is windier and stays a few degrees cooler than Pretoria due to an extra 400m/1300ft elevation. In winter, both cities often see frosty mornings followed by bright afternoons as mild as 180C/640F in Johannesburg and 220C/720F in Pretoria.

The northwest is more arid and hotter, and the interior Northern Cape even more so, with a typical year seeing only 100-200mm / 4-8in of rain. The northwest coast is virtually rain-free, yet fog is frequent and San Francisco-style coolness prevails. Heat from the dry interior can spill over the coastal ranges through gusty downslope Bergwinds that can see temperatures rise above 300C/860F at the shore almost any time of year.