# Heart of Cape Town Museum

> This file is a plain-text rendition of a page on mytuur.com, generated from the same data as the HTML version.

Canonical page: https://mytuur.com/en/city/cape-town/spot/heart-of-cape-town-museum/

Content updated: 2026-06-22

Heart of Cape Town Museum stands in Groote Schuur Hospital, Cape Town, inside the Old Main Building. The original operating rooms still frame the story. Here, Dr Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant, bringing visitors into a pivotal moment in medical history. Guided tours show the operating theatres, the animal laboratory, and a reconstruction of the surgery itself.

The museum opened on the fortieth anniversary of that operation and honours everyone involved. Its displays also examine debates about death, organ donation, and medical ethics. A hallway of letters records international praise and criticism directed at Barnard’s work.

The experience begins with a representation of the car accident that led to the heart donation. You then encounter Denise Darvall’s bedroom, Barnard’s office, and Louis Washkansky’s recovery room. The final room connects medical innovation with the personal stories of donor and recipient.

- City: [Cape Town](https://mytuur.com/en/city/cape-town/)

## Photos

- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_HeartofCapeTownMuseum_672e61e63b5f521d3642e6a1_0.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_first_heartbeat_in_Dr_Barnards_hands.JPG)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_HeartofCapeTownMuseum_672e61e63b5f521d3642e6a1_1.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_guest_from_the_future,_+44_years.JPG)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_HeartofCapeTownMuseum_672e61e63b5f521d3642e6a1_2.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wax_Figures_in_Heart_of_Capetown_Museum.jpg)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_HeartofCapeTownMuseum_672e61e63b5f521d3642e6a1_3.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lost_towel_number_15_found.JPG)
- ![](https://mytuur-bucket.s3.amazonaws.com/image_HeartofCapeTownMuseum_672e61e63b5f521d3642e6a1_4.jpg) — [Image: wikimedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Groote_Schuur_Hospital_in_South_Africa.JPG)

Spots like this one are the stops myTuur strings into tours through Cape Town. In the app, each story begins where you stand: walk up to a spot and it starts, read it on screen or listen as you go, then follow the route to the next one.

## What is myTuur?

myTuur is a free city-guide app. Its tours are built from spots, and each spot carries a story that starts when you get there, to read or to listen to as you like.