The Old Town House on the north side of Greenmarket Square is a small, perfectly proportioned Cape Baroque building from 1755, originally the city hall and watch-house. It now holds the Michaelis Collection of seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish art, donated to the city by Sir Max Michaelis in 1914.
The collection is unexpectedly good — Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Anthonis Mor, Pieter de Hooch and a strong line-up of Dutch genre painters, all hung in intimate, low-ceilinged rooms. Entry is free and you will often have the galleries to yourself, which makes for one of central Cape Town's most pleasant cultural surprises.