It is also knows as "Tshwane" by the Sotho speakers and has earned the nickname "Jacaranda City" for the 70 000 Jacaranda trees all over the city that bloom in October turning the city into a sea of deep lilac. It currently counts some 1,6 million inhabitants.

The city is always a few degrees warmer than Johannesburg because of its location in a synclinal valley that is protected by two fold mountains to the south and the north.

Pretoria has many important cultural and historical sites that include the National Zoological Gardens, Church Square with the statue of Paul Kruger (the famous Kruger Rand was named after him), Paul Kruger House, the Transvaal Museum with its natural history exhibits, Melrose House where the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed ending the Anglo-Boer War in 1902, the Union Buildings and the art deco Voortrekker Monument honouring those who survived the arduous 1 500 kilometre journey through Africa's harshest landscapes from Cape Town by ox wagon. The word "trek" thus found its way into the English language because of this mass migration of people.

The city is also a centre for the diplomatic corps of foreign embassies and most countries are represented here. The Sunnyside area used to be a fairly gay area, but the new place to hang out is in Hatfield to the east where there are lots of restaurants and shops in very pleasant surroundings and the city's student population hangs out here.

Pretoria also has many places of gay interest.

Melrose House still stands today and has been decorated with period furniture to capture the mood of the previous century. During the Ango-Boer War Lord Kitchener, the inventor of concentration camps that won Britain the war. The table on which the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed in 1902 is also still there and the place is well worth a visit.

Since 1910 the city has been associated with the administration and drafting of apartheid laws however, especially since the national head quarters of the army and police was there, as well as Pretoria Central Prison where thousands of political activists were detained until very recently.

Today the city has transformed itself and after 1994 perceptions of it as the apartheid capital started changing. Pretoria is now a very cosmopolitan city with people from all over the world and all over the country living there.