The Taj Cape Town has 166 rooms in total. These are grouped into Heritage Rooms, Tower Rooms and Suites.

The Heritage Rooms and Suites are situated in the two historic buildings (The old BOE building and the Reserve Bank building). Old-world quality and modern features tastefully complement the original landmark architecture, evident throughout the Heritage section.

The Tower Rooms and Suites are, in contrast, modern in design with their floor-to-ceiling glass façades and private balconies. These balconies open onto some beautiful views.

Then there is the exceptionally glamorous Presidential Suite, located on the 15th and 16th floors, which offers (among other things) completely unobstructed panoramic views of Table Mountain and the Company Gardens.

In the entrance foyer of the Taj Cape Town (originally the Reserve Bank central banking area) stand four grand columns. They’re presently all boxed up to ensure that, while building is taking place, they remain unscathed.

These columns have a long history and were, originally, a sense of great and continued frustration for James Morris (the Reserve Bank architect).

Morris was a phenomenal architect and he was exceptionally pedantic about both the interior and exterior appearance of his buildings.

For the Reserve Bank columns he sourced, all the way from Sweden, a mottled green and cream Cippolino (a type of marble). When the pillars arrived, and they were unpacked, Morris was convinced that he’d been had; that a cheaper marble had been sold to him at an inflated price.

A court case proved Morris’s suspicions right but it also shed some light on the exorbitant amount Morris had spent on these columns. The taxpayers were outraged and they insisted that the government curb their reckless spending! Due to this pressure, from the taxpayers, the green and cream Cippolino columns were scrapped and replaced with, the more cost effective, cream and brown Portuguese Styros columns.

These Portuguese Styros are the columns presently hiding behind the protective casings in the Taj Cape Town foyer.