For decades, the island was a towering emblem of punishment—first for enslaved labourers and lepers under colonial rule and ...

Robben Island has served many functions. Most famously, it was the political prison that housed Nelson Mandela, the deceased South African president, for 18 years. In the 19th century, it served as a ...

U.S. News Insider Tip: The ferry ride to Robben Island can be quite choppy. If you tend to get queasy, visit the museum at the Cape Town ferry dock and also consider the free Apartheid to Freedom ...

Nelson Mandela and former president Bill Clinton look to the outside from Mandela's Robben Island prison cell in Cape Town, South Africa in 1998. AP South Africa’s Cape Town boasts stunning views of ...

Robben Island sits in South Africa’s Table Bay, only 4.5 miles (7 kilometers) from Cape Town’s beaches, in a rather spectacular physical setting. But this island is no pleasure resort. Instead, it has ...

South Africa’s Robben Island Museum is an institution limping through a pandemic and weighed down by its roller-coaster history. In our book, Robben Island Rainbow Dreams which will be published on 24 ...

In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do ...

Weeds are about the only thing remaining amid the sandy bumps of the soccer field that served the prisoners on the infamous island where Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists were held.

David Schalkwyk is director of research at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington and editor of the Shakespeare Quarterly. He is the author of "Hamlet's Dreams: The Robben Island Shakespeare." ...

Survival of endangered African penguin chicks increased by 18% following a trial three-year fishery closure around Robben Island in South Africa, a new study from the University of Exeter has found.

Robben Island was used at various times between the 17th and 20th centuries as a prison, a hospital for socially unacceptable groups and a military base. Its buildings, particularly those of the late ...