Frontiers Karoo Restaurant

Nomadic farmers reaching the edge of the known world named their new farms Uitkomst (Outcome), Vergenoegd (Far Enough), and Slegtgenoeg (Bad Enough) as early as 1770. The settlement founded in 1786 to serve them became so fed up with distant colonial rule that burghers twice declared independence, in 1795 and again in 1799. Today, this fourth-oldest South African town holds more national monuments than any other in the country, thanks largely to billionaire Anton Rupert, who funded the restoration of over 220 buildings between 1965 and 1981.

The settlement’s name came from Cape governor Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff and his wife, Cornelia Reinet, an honor the burghers apparently didn’t feel obligated to repay with loyalty. The 1795 revolt expelled the local Landdrost and declared an independent colony; when the British arrived to take over the Cape that same year, the burghers refused to recognize their authority either, before relenting months later. The rebellion resurfaced in 1799, when locals broke commandant Adriaan van Jaarsveld out of custody. It didn’t end well for him: he and fellow rebel Marthinus Prinsloo were later sentenced to death in Cape Town.

Two centuries on, the town’s reputation for defiance gave way to a reputation for preservation, largely underwritten by one family. Rupert, the Rembrandt Group magnate born in Graaff-Reinet, bought the town’s 1821 mission church in 1965 to save it from becoming a petrol station, turning it into the Hester Rupert Art Museum, named for his mother. He bought a former mission church turned community theater in 1969 and donated it back to the town as the John Rupert Little Theatre. By the time the restoration wound down in 1981, Graaff-Reinet had earned more national monuments than any other town in the country, a title built first by rebelling against authority and then by refusing to let any of the buildings that housed that rebellion fall down.