The best surf & design hotels · Cape Town
21 Nettleton
In 1999, Hugo Jankowitz stood above Clifton Bay and saw not a hotel site but a home. He built it, lived in it for a decade, and opened the doors to guests in 2016. Six suites across eight floors of cliffside mansion — each one built around a different chapter of a collection that spans ancient Chinese Xi'an warriors, 19th-century European oil paintings, contemporary South African sculpture, and a Jade Horse carved in the style of the third century BC. The collection is Jankowitz's, and he is often there to walk guests through it himself. Architecture by Graig Kaplan; hardware by Lázaro Rosa-Violán's BOSCO collection — the interiors push against the clean-line aesthetic of Clifton rather than conforming to it. The Clifton beaches and the Cape surf coast sit directly below.
We may earn a commission if you book via this link.
The hotel
The design
Jankowitz has a personal story about every piece. He is often there to tell it.
The collection spans centuries and continents without a single governing logic except the owner's eye — Chinese Xi'an warriors beside 19th-century European oils, a third-century BC Jade Horse in one suite, a Flemish tapestry in the next. Architecture by Graig Kaplan; hardware by Lázaro Rosa-Violán's BOSCO collection, deliberately textured against Clifton's prevailing clean-line aesthetic. Private art tours on request.
The design
Jankowitz has a personal story about every piece. He is often there to tell it.
The collection spans centuries and continents without a single governing logic except the owner's eye — Chinese Xi'an warriors beside 19th-century European oils, a third-century BC Jade Horse in one suite, a Flemish tapestry in the next. Architecture by Graig Kaplan; hardware by Lázaro Rosa-Violán's BOSCO collection, deliberately textured against Clifton's prevailing clean-line aesthetic. Private art tours on request.
