Signal Hill & Lion's Head

Signal Hill is Cape Town's sunset mountain — a 350-metre promontory between Table Mountain and the sea that provides the most accessible elevated view of the city and is the default destination for the evening crowd that arrives with picnic blankets, wine, and the intention of watching the sun drop into the Atlantic from 350 metres above sea level.

The summit of Signal Hill is accessible by car (a road winds to a parking area near the top), which makes it the only elevated viewpoint in Cape Town that doesn't require hiking or a cable car. The Noon Gun, a cannon fired from Signal Hill at exactly noon every day (except Sundays and public holidays) since 1806, is one of the oldest daily traditions in the city — the gun was originally used to allow ships in the harbour to set their chronometers, and the boom reverberating across the city bowl remains a daily punctuation mark that Capetonians set their lives by.

Lion's Head, the conical peak between Signal Hill and Table Mountain, is the city's most popular sunset hike — a 2.5-hour round trip that involves scrambling over rocks and climbing metal ladders near the summit, rewarding the effort with a 360-degree panorama that includes Table Mountain, the Atlantic coast, the city bowl, and the Cape Flats stretching east to the Hottentots Holland mountains. Full-moon hikes up Lion's Head, when hundreds of hikers climb by headlamp and moonlight, are one of Cape Town's most distinctive outdoor traditions.