1.
Pretoria
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Pretoria is a city in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the three capital cities, serving as the seat of the executive branch of government. Pretoria is the part of the Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality which was formed by the amalgamation of several former local authorities including Centurion. There have been proposals to change the name of Pretoria itself to Tshwane, the elder Pretorius had become a national hero of the Voortrekkers after his victory over Dingane and the Zulus in the Battle of Blood River. The elder Pretorius also negotiated the Sand River Convention, in which Britain acknowledged the independence of the Transvaal and it became the capital of the South African Republic on 1 May 1860. The founding of Pretoria as the capital of the South African Republic can be seen as marking the end of the Boers settlement movements of the Great Trek, during the First Boer War, the city was besieged by Republican forces in December 1880 and March 1881. The peace treaty ended the war was signed in Pretoria on 3 August 1881 at the Pretoria Convention. The Second Boer War resulted in the end of the Transvaal Republic, the city surrendered to British forces under Frederick Roberts on 5 June 1900 and the conflict was ended in Pretoria with the signing of the Peace of Vereeniging on 31 May 1902. The Pretoria Forts were built for the defence of the city just prior to the Second Boer War, though some of these forts are today in ruins, a number of them have been preserved as national monuments. The Boer Republics of the ZAR and the Orange River Colony were united with the Cape Colony, Pretoria then became the administrative capital of the whole of South Africa, with Cape Town the legislative capital and Bloemfontein served as the judicial capital. Between 1910 and 1994, the city was also the capital of the province of Transvaal, on 14 October 1931, Pretoria achieved official city status. When South Africa became a republic in 1961, Pretoria remained its administrative capital and it lies at an altitude of about 1,339 m above sea level, in a warm, sheltered, fertile valley, surrounded by the hills of the Magaliesberg range. Pretoria has a subtropical climate with long hot rainy summers and short cool to cold. The city experiences the typical winters of South Africa with cold, clear nights, although the average lows during winter are mild it can get bitterly cold due to the clear skies, with nighttime low temperatures in recent years in the range of 2 to −5 °C. The average annual temperature is 18.7 °C, rain is chiefly concentrated in the summer months, with drought conditions prevailing over the winter months, when frosts may be sharp. Snowfall is a rare event, snowflakes were spotted in 1959,1968 and 2012 in the city. During a nationwide heatwave in November 2011, Pretoria experienced temperatures that reached 39 °C, similar record-breaking extreme heat events also occurred in January 2013, when Pretoria experienced temperatures exceeding 37 °C on several days. The year 2014 was one of the wettest on record for the city, a total of 914 mm fell up to the end of December, with 220 mm recorded in this month alone
2.
South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
3.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
4.
Max Michaelis
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Sir Maximillian Michaelis KCMG was a South African financier, mining magnate, benefactor and patron of the arts. Michaelis received his schooling in Nuremberg where he is said to have developed his love of old masters. Michaelis first arrived in South Africa in 1876 when he landed at Port Elizabeth, two years later he had moved to Kimberley, drawn by the 1871 discovery of diamonds and the prospect of wealth. Here he became a business associate of Julius Wernher and Alfred Beit and got to know Hermann Eckstein. He was co-opted by Wernher to deal in diamonds for Porges and Wernher and he was a founding partner of Wernher, Beit & Co. Within some years he had become manager of the Central Mining, from 1896 he worked at the Corporations offices in London and remained there until 1919, when he returned to South Africa. In England he led a secluded life on the country estate. With the outbreak of World War I and the hysteria that gripped England. Max Michaelis and his wife arrived in Cape Town in 1919, in December of that year a grand civic reception for 2,000 guests was given in his honour. In 1913 he had presented a collection of Dutch and Flemish old masters to the Union government and these formed the basis of the Michaelis Collection and were housed in the Old Town House in Cape Town. Besides, a lot of the works were regarded as being of indifferent quality and these works had been collected by Lady Phillips and Sir Hugh Lane. In June 1920 at the urging of Lady Phillips, he endowed the chair of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town and he also donated a large number of art works to museums in Kimberley and Johannesburg. In 1924 a knighthood was conferred on Max Michaelis and he died of cancer in Zurich in 1932. She was also the founder of the Lady Michaelis Orthopaedic Home in Cape Town, moses Kottler created a bronze bust of Sir Max, which was placed in the garden of the Old Town House in Cape Town. In 1920, Max Michaelis acquired the Montebello estate in Newlands
5.
Dutch Golden Age painting
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The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe, and led European trade, science, and art. Most work, including that for which the period is best known, a distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of specialization is seen from the late 1620s. A distinctive feature of the period, compared to earlier European painting, was the amount of religious painting. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious painting in churches, and though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes, the development of many of these types of painting was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists. The widely held theory of the hierarchy of genres in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, however this was the hardest to sell, as even Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes, which much more easily. In descending order of status the categories in the hierarchy were, history painting, including allegories, most paintings were relatively small – the only common type of really large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed, when a wall-space in a public building needed decorating fitted framed canvas was normally used, painted delftware tiles were very cheap and common, if rarely of really high quality, but silver, especially in the auricular style, led Europe. With this exception, the best artistic efforts were concentrated on painting and printmaking, the volume of production meant that prices were fairly low, except for the best known artists, as in most subsequent periods there was a steep price gradient for more fashionable artists. In particular the French invasion of 1672, brought a depression to the art market. The distribution of pictures was very wide, yea many tymes, blacksmithes, cobblers etts. will have some picture or other by their Forge, such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting reported an English traveller in 1640. There were for virtually the first time many professional art dealers, several significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van Goyen. Rembrandts dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and his son Gerrit were among the most important, typically workshops were smaller than in Flanders or Italy, with only one or two apprentices at a time, the number often being restricted by guild regulations. In many cases involved the artists extricating themselves from medieval groupings where they shared a guild with several other trades. Several new guilds were established in the period, Amsterdam in 1579, Haarlem in 1590, the Leiden authorities distrusted guilds and did not allow one until 1648. The Hague, with the court, was an early example, there were many dynasties of artists, and many married the daughters of their masters or other artists. Many artists came from families, who paid fees for their apprenticeships
6.
Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef
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Jacobus Hendrik Pierneef, was a South African landscape artist, generally considered to be one of the best of the old South African masters. His distinctive style is widely recognised and his work was influenced by the South African landscape. Most of his landscapes were of the South African highveld, which provided a source of inspiration for him. Pierneefs style was to reduce and simplify the landscape to geometric structures, using planes, lines and colour to present the harmony. This resulted in formalised, ordered and often-monumental view of the South African landscape, uninhabited and with dramatic light, Pierneef was born in Pretoria, from Dutch and Boer parentage. He started his school career at the Staatsmodelschool there, where he took his first art classes. Due to the war, the Pierneef family decided to back to the Netherlands in 1901. While there he studied at the Rotterdamse Kunstakademie, during this time, he also came into contact with the works of the old masters, which left a lasting impression on him. Pierneef returned to Pretoria at the age of 18, where he met with and was encouraged by already established South African artists such as his godfather Anton van Wouw, Hugo Naude and Frans Oerder. His first public exhibition, where his work was well received, was with van Wouw. He worked at the State Library during the night for almost ten years, in 1910, Pierneef married Agatha Delen, a woman 12 years his senior. Pierneef held his first solo exhibition in 1913, to critical acclaim, some even describing his work as that of a genius. His second solo exhibition was held two years later and was very well received. During this period, he also did illustrations for a periodicals. In 1918, Pierneef left the State Library and started a career as an art lecturer at the Heidelberg College of Education, during the following year, he also started teaching drawing at the Pretoria College of Education. These positions gave him the opportunity to focus on his art and he participated in many successful solo, due to the recognition that he received, Pierneef realised that he was setting the trend for a unique South African style. Personally, it was a time in his life – his wife Agatha suffered from a mental disorder. Pierneef resigned as lecturer and became a painter in 1923
7.
Frans Oerder
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Frans David Oerder was a Dutch-born South African landscape, still-life and portrait painter, etcher and lithographer. Frans was the youngest of seven born to a municipal employee. His father felt that art as a career was foolish, following his brother, he emigrated to South Africa in 1890, and initially worked as house painter and decorator for the firm of De Wyn & Engelenburg. Pressed by a shortage of work he entered the employ of the Zuid-Afrikaansche Spoorweg Maatschappij, in the 1890s, Oerder was, along with Anton van Wouw and James Smith Moreland in Cape Town, one of only three artists in South Africa with recognised professional training. In 1894, he took up the position of art teacher at the Staatsmeisjesskool and he eked out a living by drawing newspaper cartoons and helping Anton van Wouw with commissions. A frequent visitor to the studio during this period was one of his art students, in 1896, Oerder went on a painting holiday to Zululand, and arranged an exhibition of his work in Cape Town. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Boer War in 1899, he was appointed war artist by President Paul Kruger. His sketches and paintings from this period are held at the War Museum in Bloemfontein, the Africana Museum in Johannesburg. In 1903, after the war, and no doubt still remembering his Zululand trip, Oerder travelled and painted along the East African coast and he found conditions difficult in postwar South Africa and in 1908 returned to the Netherlands via Italy. At first he settled in Brabant, but later moved to Amsterdam where he married a painter, Gerda Pitlo. Her interest in painting influenced him and he started on still life compositions. Oerder hadnt forgotten his ties to South Africa, and occasionally carried out such as designing covers for the weekly magazine, Die Brandwag. He eventually returned to Pretoria with his wife in 1938 and his work by now was widely acclaimed, and in a grand gesture the tower-room of the Pretoria City Hall was made available to him for use as a studio. Here he painted several important portraits, including that of Jan Smuts and he now had the time and inclination to travel and paint in the Cape Province, Natal and the Northern Transvaal. Complications following on a bout of pneumonia left him debilitated, throughout his career he had divided his output fairly evenly between landscape, portrait and still-life, with the Dutch influence always apparent
8.
Anton van Wouw
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Anton van Wouw was a Dutch-born sculptor regarded as the father of South African sculpture. Van Wouw decided to move to the city of Pretoria at the age of 28. This was from financier Sammy Marks to create a statue of Paul Kruger. During his time spent in the wilderness he developed an admiration for the Boer nation. This also influenced his development a great deal. He identified with the struggles and hopes of people and this commitment was reflected in his work. A great deal of his work, although representational, captures the rugged, one of his most notable pieces of work is the figure of a woman used in the Women’s Monument near Bloemfontein. He collaborated on this with the architect Frans Soff and he also portrayed indigenous peoples and among these smaller sculptures some of his finest work can be found. They are much less formal than his work and are appealing in their vivid. Woman and Children, completed in 1938 and this bronze statue honouring the role the Voortrekker women played in the Great Trek was van Wouws last commission. The sculpture is located at the base of the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, stands 4.1 meter tall, the casting was done by Renzo Vignali in Pretoria. Van Wouw Museum located in his final residence, van Wouw Museum The spatial symbolism of the Voortrekker Monument Anton van Wouw Anton van Wouw House Bust of MT Steyn Arcy Art
9.
Maggie Laubser
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Maria Magdalena Laubser, known as Maggie Laubser was a South African painter and printmaker. She is generally considered, along with Irma Stern, to be responsible for the introduction of Expressionism to South Africa and her work was initially met with derision by critics but has gained wide acceptance, and now she is regarded as an exemplary and quintessentially South African artist. Maria Magdalena Laubser was born on the wheat farm Bloublommetjieskloof near Malmesbury in the Swartland and she was the eldest of six children of Gerhardus Petrus Christiaan Laubser and Johanna Catharina Laubser. Laubsers youth was dominated by the rural and pastoral and she delighted in this carefree existence, after attending the farm school Rocklands, she left for boarding school at Bloemhof Seminary, Stellenbosch, where she was introduced to the art of drawing. In 1903 she convinced her parents to let her go to Cape Town once a week for singing lessons, the difficulty of travel and the low opinion her mother had of her mezzo-soprano voice discouraged her, but it was at this stage that she started painting on her own. She studied painting under Roworth in Cape Town for two months of 1903, during which time she received a medal for her work. By 1910, she had her own studio in Strand Street, while on vacation in Durban with a friend, Sophie Fisher, she befriended Jan Hendrik Arnold Balwé, a shipping-line owner who offered to finance her and her sister Hannahs studies abroad. Laubser and her left for Europe on 4 October 1913, initially living in an artists colony at Laren. She met Ita Mees, a concert pianist and Frederik van Eeden, author and she also befriended Laura Knight and Frans Langeveld, both painters. In the last years of his life, Anton Mauve, who was an important influence on Vincent van Gogh, Maggie worked in the studio he established there. At the outbreak of World War I she went to London and she initially stayed in Huntingdonshire and then, in October 1914, moved to a London hotel and registered at the Slade School of Art for the period October 1914 to March 1919. Henry Tonks, Walter Westley Russell and Ambrose McEvoy taught her drawing and it seems that she never painted during her time at the Slade, instead concentrating her efforts on drawing of portraiture and figure studies. Maggie returned to South Africa briefly in 1915 to visit the new farm at Oortmanspost, near Klipheuwel in the Cape Province and again in March 1919. She left London on 6 June 1919 for Belgium, staying at Antwerp and she befriended Arnold Balwé, son of her patron, who studied at the Academy. She might have accompanied Balwé as a student, as is evidenced by a number of nude studies sketched during this period. There is also evidence that she came into contact with the art of Die Brücke. She travelled with Balwé to Italy in August/September 1920 and lived and worked at Torri del Benaco, during this time the couple was supported financially by Balwés father and this gave them freedom to work on paintings for possible exhibitions instead of sale. A large number of signed and dated works from this period give some support to this
10.
Hendrik Verwoerd
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Verwoerd played an instrumental role in helping the far right National Party come to power in 1948 serving as their propagandist and political strategist. He eventually rose to party leader in 1958 and he greatly empowered, modernized and enlarged the police, secret police and army. Verwoerd ordered a secret all-out offensive against those who opposed apartheid, Verwoerd was a right wing authoritarian leader and Afrikaner nationalist. He was an advocate of the Afrikaner volk, language, culture. He held that belief that white control over South Africa could only continue if the races lived apart and he survived an assassination attempt in 1960, succumbing to a subsequent one in 1966. Prior to entering politics, Verwoerd was regarded as a brilliant social science professor at Stellenbosch University and he completed his undergraduate studies magna cum laude majoring in Sociology, Psychology and Philosophy. Verwoerd, continued his studies completing his Masters and Doctorate in both Social Psychology and Philosophy, upon his return to South Africa, he was appointed professor of Applied Psychology at Stellenbosch University at the age of 26. He was then appointed as head of the Sociology department in 1933. Verwoerd was prime minister during the establishment of the Republic of South Africa in 1961 and his term ended with his assassination on 6 September 1966 by Dimitri Tsafendas. Verwoerd was born in the Netherlands, thus making him the only South African prime minister who was not born in the country and he was the second child of Anje Strik and Wilhelmus Johannes Verwoerd, he had an elder brother named Leendert and a younger sister named Lucie. His father was a shopkeeper and a religious man who decided to move his family to South Africa in 1903 because of his sympathy towards the Afrikaner nation after the Second Boer War. Verwoerd went to a Lutheran primary school in Wynberg, a suburb of Cape Town, by the end of 1912 the Verwoerd family moved to Bulawayo, in what was then Rhodesia, where his father became an assistant evangelist in the Dutch Reformed Church. Hendrik Verwoerd attended Milton High School where he was awarded the Beit Scholarship, established through the generosity of the diamond magnate, Verwoerd received the top marks for English literature in the whole of Rhodesia. In 1917 the family moved back to South Africa because the congregation in Bulawayo appointed a minister of religion. His father took up a position in the church in Brandfort, due to the worldwide Spanish flu epidemic, the younger Verwoerd only sat for his matriculation exams in February 1919, achieving first position in the Orange Free State and fifth in South Africa. After his schooling, he proceeded to study theology at the University of Stellenbosch and he was regarded as a brilliant student and known to possess a nearely photographic memory. He was also a member of a club as well as a hiking club. In 1921 he graduated with honours and he applied for admission to the Theology School
11.
City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality
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The City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality /ˈtswɑːnɛ/ is the metropolitan municipality that forms the local government of northern Gauteng Province, South Africa. The Metropolitan area is centred on the city of Pretoria with surrounding towns, the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality was established on 5 December 2000, comprising 13 former city and town councils and managed under an executive mayoral system. The Metsweding District Municipality was incorporated into the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality, the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipalitys land area increased from 2,198 square kilometres in 2010 to 6,368 square kilometres after the incorporation of Metsweding. The Tswaing crater is in the northwest of Soshanguve. 40% black,20. 08% white,2. 01% coloured and 1. 84% Indian or Asian, the municipal council consists of 214 members elected by mixed-member proportional representation. In the election of 3 August 2016, the Democratic Alliance won a plurality of 93 seats on the council, on August 19,2016, minority parties united with the DA to vote in DA mayoral candidate, Solly Msimanga as the first Democratic Alliance mayor of Tshwane. Msimanga appointed a mayoral committee consisting of the DA, African Christian Democratic Party. The following table shows the results of the 2016 election, as of 2016 City of Tshwane receives 72% of its bulk water from Rand Water, which utilizes the Integrated Vaal River System. The remaining 28% of Tshwanes water is sourced from its own treatment plants, Water restrictions are implemented during drought, heat waves or other seasonal changes. The main rail station is in Pretoria, the Gautrain runs through parts of the municipality, with stations in Centurion and Pretoria, ending at a station in the suburb of Hatfield. OR Tambo International Airport in neighbouring Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality serves Tshwane, wonderboom Airport in the north of Tshwane serves light aircraft. The Tshwane municipality is home to the Tshwane University of Technology, the South African Air Force military bases AFB Waterkloof and AFB Swartkop are in Tshwane. Although the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality was only created in 2000, the SANDF memorial is at Fort Klapperkop and the South African Air Force memorial is at AFB Swartkop. There are a number of museums, many of them in Pretoria. The origin of the name of the river is unclear and it may mean place -e of the black cow, tshwana, from ceremonies where a black cow was sprinkled with water from the river to end a drought. However, some Ndebele kings claim to have never heard of a chief named Tshwane, two other common explanations are demonstrably untrue. One is that it is the Tswana for the motto of Tshwane Municipality, however, this appears to be promoted for its emotional value, if anything, it would mean we are not the same in Tswana. The name Tshwane is sometimes used as a name for the city of Pretoria itself. Following the city councils vote of March 8,2005, it could become the new name if approved by the central government
12.
Union Buildings
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The Union Buildings form the official seat of the South African government and also house the offices of the president of South Africa. The imposing buildings are located in Pretoria, atop Meintjieskop at the end of Arcadia, close to historic Church Square. The large gardens of the Buildings are nestled between Government Avenue, Vermeulen Street East, Church Street, the R104 and Blackwood Street, fairview Avenue is a closed road where only officials can enter to the Union Buildings. Though not in the center of Pretoria the Union Buildings occupy the highest point of Pretoria, the Buildings are one of the centres of political life in South Africa, The Buildings and Arcadia have become metonyms for the South African government. It has become a landmark of Pretoria and South Africa in general, and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in the city. The Buildings are the location of presidential inaugurations and these buildings, built from light sandstone, were designed by the architect Sir Herbert Baker in the English monumental style and are 285 m long. They have a shape, with the two wings at the sides, this serves to represent the union of a formerly divided people. The clock chimes are identical to those of Big Ben in London, the east and west wings, as well as the twin-domed towers, represent two languages, English and Afrikaans, and the inner court symbolises the Union of South Africa. These buildings are considered by many to be the architects greatest achievement, the Nelson Mandela statue in Sandton Citys Nelson Mandela Square was commissioned originally to stand on the spot where Nelson Mandela gave his inaugural address. The building was sited on a quarry, which now makes up the amphitheatre. The matching statues on top of the towers are Atlas, holding up the world. The statue on the rostrum in the amphitheatre between the wings is Mercury, a mythic Roman messenger and a god of trade, sculpted by George Ness. The closest suburb to the Union Buildings is Arcadia, which means Playground of Gods, Pretoria has the second largest number of embassies in the world, after Washington, D. C. most of which are located in or near Arcadia. The design of each level differs, and therefore each stone had to be individually cut, the Architectural styles of the building ranges from the lower levels Edwardian style to the top levels Cape Dutch design with shutters on the windows. The windows from bottom to top are elongated and become shorter towards the top floor and this is to give the illusion of height. The Union Buildings are the site of presidential inaugurations, the official offices of the president are on the left-hand side of the Union Buildings, and the South African national flag is flown on the left-hand side if the president is in office. The Buildings are divided into three sections, the offices, amphitheatre, and right offices. All are 95 metres in length, each offices block contains three inner courtyards providing light and air to the offices
