The man from the ‘New York Times’ summed Prince Albert up perfectly when he said that first sight of this place was like ‘spying the Emerald City after a long trek on the Yellow Brick Road’. Somehow in its early boom years, which began in the mid-1990s, arty folk started coming to Prince Albert, settling and indulging their creativity. Why?
Often dubbed the Franschhoek of the Karoo, Prince Albert has managed to attract foreign residents, well-heeled Capetonians and rich retirees from all over South Africa. But it’s the presence of the 30-odd members of the Prince Albert Open Studios route that helps to give it the kind of classy cachet that results in a relatively buoyant real estate market in the midst of a national property slump.
