Bantry Bay hotels

If you're looking for a spot to stay in Bantry Bay you've come to the right webpage! Use the comparison tool on the right to compare all accommodation options.

Bantry Bay is an upmarket area on Cape Town's Atlantic Seaboard wedged between Clifton and Sea Point, and near the nightlife and restaurants of Camps Bay (but many of the establishments in Bantry Bay have better views than Camps Bay, simply because it's on a steeper part of Lion's Head). When your flight lands, be sure to sure to hire a car from Cape Town airport, and you'll have easy access to the city.

Consider whether you would like to stay closer to the sea, or are looking for a view.

List of Bantry hotels

A directory/list of the official contact details of hotels & guest houses in Bantry Bay (email address, website, phone number and fax number). If you would like your establishment listed below, email cheapflights@southafrica.to.

Map centred on Bantry Bay

Botany Bay

In 1803 a botantical garden was established by Dr Friedrich Ludwig Liesching – the first president of the South African Medical Society - mostly to cultivate medicinal herbs but also rare botanical specimens. Latrobe, Secretary of the Moravian Church in England sent to organise the mission stations at Mamre and Genadendal reports a visit to Liesching (and his friend Ziegler) in his "Journal of a visit to South Africa in 1815 and 1816" as follows: "...by a continuation of the road, dug deep into the declivity of the mountain, we reached the villa of Dr Liesching and Mr Ziegler for dinner. This is a romantic spot, with a great variety of garden ground, laid in terraces down a very rugged kloof and containing a large collection of scarce plants and flowering shrubs. At the bottom of the grounds the rocks form a grotto in which is a cold bath."

Even though the botanical garden was later abandoned, the name Botany Bay was used for the estate until it was purchased in 1882 by a man of Irish descent, named O’Callaghan. O'Callaghan renamed it "Bantry Bay" after an inlet on the southwest coast of Ireland. Perhaps, what helped O'Callaghan make up his mind were the connotations with Botany Bay in Australia – a penal colony where from 1788 thousands of convicts were sent from Britain.

Traces of the original garden terraces can still be seen between Kloof and Victoria Roads.

Nearby attractions

See the plaque on the seashore commemorating the observation by Charles Darwin of the intrusion of Basaltic volcanic rock into granitic rock.

The small beach at Saunders Rocks and its tidal pool.