Robben Island Prison

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Robben Island is a flat, windswept island in Table Bay, a few kilometres off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. It is about 5 square kilometres in size. For more than 300 years it was used as a place to lock people away, and it is most famous as the prison where Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years behind bars.

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At a glance

Country: South Africa
Location: Table Bay, Cape Town, South Africa
Built: 1961

Quick answers

Where is Robben Island Prison?

Robben Island Prison is in Table Bay, Cape Town, South Africa.

When was Robben Island Prison built?

Robben Island Prison was built in 1961.

The island prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 years, now a museum.

Today the prison is a museum, and the island is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Visitors take a ferry from Cape Town and are often shown around by former prisoners, who tell their own stories. The island is also home to African penguins, which makes it a place about both hard history and wildlife.

A prison island

From the late 1600s the island was fortified and used as a prison. During apartheid, the system of unfair racial laws in South Africa, many people who opposed it were held here. From 1845 the island also housed people with leprosy, a disease that was feared at the time. The prison finally closed in 1996.

Mandela and the museum

Nelson Mandela was kept on Robben Island for 18 years and later became South Africa's first Black president, serving from 1994 to 1999. The island opened as a museum in 1997 and was listed by UNESCO in 1999 as a place that reminds the world of the struggle for freedom and equality.

Wildlife today

African penguins settled again on the island in 1983. Their numbers rose to around 16,000 in 2004 but have since dropped a lot, and the species is endangered. Rabbits brought to the island long ago became a problem for local plants and are being reduced.

Fun facts

Nelson Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison on Robben Island.
Tour guides are often former political prisoners, so visitors hear first-hand stories.
The island has been a prison, a leprosy hospital, an animal quarantine station and now a museum.
Rabbits were brought here in the 1650s, and their descendants became so many that people are now culling them.