Main Street Mall

When gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand in 1886, the giant mining houses — Anglo American, JCI, Rand Mines, General Mining, Gold Fields, Standard Bank — all set up headquarters within a few blocks of each other on Main and Marshalltown streets. By the 1920s this was the corporate heart of southern Africa, and the buildings reflect it: Edwardian sandstone, Art Deco granite, Modernist concrete and a postmodern Sir Norman Foster tower for Standard Bank, all in one walk.

In 2009 the City of Johannesburg pedestrianised six blocks of Main Street between Diagonal and Sauer streets, planted indigenous trees, laid mosaic paving and installed a series of large public sculptures: a 6-tonne mining gear by Marco Cianfanelli, a fountain of life-sized bronze miners, a wall of helmeted workers in cast concrete. Every piece is unmissable signage that this was — and partly still is — Africa's most important corporate address.

Highlights along the walk include the Anglo American campus at 44 Main Street (still the head office of the world's largest platinum producer); the original 1903 Corner House; Standard Bank's giant suspended tower at the head of the mall; and a small free museum at the Anglo American building open during the week.

Just off the mall is Gandhi Square, the original 1893 stand on which a 24-year-old Mohandas Gandhi practised law. A bronze statue of Gandhi in barrister's robes stands at the centre of the square, and the surrounding Gauteng Transport Authority buildings give a sense of the modern working CBD.

Practical info: Main Street Mall is open public space, free to walk, and best visited on a weekday between 09:00 and 15:00 when the corporate quarter is alive. The full walk is about 1.5 kilometres and takes 60–90 minutes with a guide. We include it on our Johannesburg City Tour as the heritage spine of the CBD.