Tulbagh

Province

Tulbagh is a wine village in the municipality Witzberg, district, Cape Winelands, Western Cape Province in South Africa. The town is located approximately 125 kilometers northeast of Cape Town in the climatically favored Breede River Valley and is surrounded by up to 2,200 meters high mountains of Witzberg Mountain and the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness. The town was founded in 1700 as Roodezand received its present name in 1795 after Ryk Tulbagh, Governor of the Cape Colony from 1751 to 1771. The city lies 800 meters above sea level and 2011 had 8,969 inhabitants.

History

Due to its favorable climatic conditions - abundant rainfall in the winter months ( July-August, sometimes even snow ) and dry - warm in summer - was the Tulbagh Valley at the end of the 17th century by the Boers and with increasing fruit and wine cultivation by British colonized. 1743 bought here the first church in southern Africa, now a well-known museum ( Oude Kerk Folk Museum ). Near the town there were Africans, a Orlam strain down, they found good hunting grounds on the farms of the Boers and work in the surrounding mountains. Probably also has the later name of the capital Southwest Africa ( now Namibia of ) Windhoek here in the Groot Winterhoek Wilderness its roots. At least is close to this statement, since the Africans, the first permanent residents of Windhoek and were their chief Jonker Afrikaner was born in 1790 near Tulbagh.

Tulbagh was somewhat isolated and therefore was less developed than the places in the area ( Montagu, Ceres and Worcester ), who had much greater success with wine and large orchards, especially since they had a better road links and the transports not only difficult passes as Bain's had to overcome Kloof Pass.

On September 29, 1969 there was an earthquake, the town was badly damaged. A made up of historians and architects team designed a reconstruction program, so that a closed ensemble of houses in the Cape Dutch style emerged. All 32 homes on Church Street were declared a national monument and today form an open air museum with buildings from the 18th and 19th century. Among the wineries include Drostdy Hof, Twee Jonge, Gezellen and Theuniskraal.