Things to Do in Alte Feste

Independence Museum panorama terrace

Take the glass lift that climbs the museum's outer wall. As you rise the city tilts below - tin roofs flashing in the sun, the Khomas ridge a blue saw-edge on the horizon. Up top the wind snaps at your shirt and carries the smell of woodsmoke from the township braais below. Breathe it in.

Alte Feste courtyard at golden hour

Slip inside an hour before sunset. The walls turn the colour of honey and you can trace German graffiti carved into the sandstone in 1907. Weaver birds fuss in the rafters, dropping grass seeds that tick against the corrugated roof like light rain. Pure magic.

Zoo Park bench picnic

Two minutes' walk south, the park's giant fig drops cool shards of shade onto green benches. Unwrap a kapana steak roll from the vendors on Lüderitz Street and listen to kids drum on paint cans for spare change - rhythms echo off the Alte Feste walls across the road. Cheap lunch.

Old Fort craft market

Spread over the cobbled driveway on weekends, stalls sag under piles of ostrich-egg shell necklaces and the sour-milk smell of oshikundu in plastic bottles. Vendors clap beads together like castanets to catch your ear. Loud sales pitch.

ate-night jazz at the Warehouse Theatre

Five blocks downhill, the old shipping depot throbs with sax on Friday nights. Beer sloshes onto the concrete floor and the air tastes of yeasty Windhoek Lager and wood-smoke from the braai drum out back. Dance floor calls.

Windhoek Central: faded high-rise hotelsals within stumbling distance of Joe's Beerhouse

Luxury Hill: leafy embassies, cooler air, pool decks overlooking the city sprawl

Klein Windhoek: village-y cafés along the grassy river bend

Southern Industrial: converted warehouse hostels, cheaper, quiet after 6 p.m.

Katutura: guest houses in cinder-block suburbs, drumming nightlife, taxi ride uphill

Eros: B&Bs under flowering jacarandas, small dogs barking at aircraft overhead