Iziko South African Museum, Natural history museum in City Centre, Cape Town, South Africa

The Iziko South African Museum occupies a building in the Company's Garden that has housed it since 1897. Across four levels it holds over 1.5 million scientific specimens, from fossils up to 700 million years old to fish collected within recent days. The Whale Well rises through the floors, displaying whale casts and skeletons including a 20.5-metre blue whale skeleton.

The institution was founded in 1825 as South Africa's first museum. It relocated to its present building in the Company's Garden in 1897 and became an important repository for regional collections.

The name Iziko is Xhosa for "hearth". On the ground level, The Power of Rock Art, opened in 2003, is the city's only permanent exhibit on San people and their history. Nearby displays cover Nguni and Sotho-Tswana material culture and the early Iron Age Lydenburg Heads.

The museum is set in the Company's Garden in central Cape Town, reachable on foot from the city centre. Exhibitions fill four levels, from the ground-floor whale well to the Level 3 Karoo fossil gallery, so allow time to move between floors. Monthly flyers on planetarium productions are available at the entrance.

The Whale Well spans several floors and holds a 20.5-metre blue whale skeleton, not a right whale, alongside casts and skeletons of other cetaceans. Visitors can listen to recordings of humpback whale song there. The well is visible from every level of the museum.