The Big Hole and Museum

150 years ago, the site of the Big Hole was a featureless, flat-topped hill. When word spread that diamonds had been discovered, thousands of prospectors, armed with nothing more than picks, shovels and hope, descended on Kimberley and created the largest hand-dug excavation in the world.

The Kimberley Mine Museum offers a trip back in time to when diamonds were first found in South Africa in 1866, near Hopetown in the Northern Cape. Three years later the 83-carat 'Star of South Africa' was discovered in the same area, unleashing a frenzied diamond rush seldom seen before or since.