Dias Museum

Name:            Dias Museum

Location:       Mossel Bay

Status:           Completed 1979

We were appointed to design a new museum at Mossel Bay Post Office Tree to commemorate Bartholomeus Diaz’s landing there 500 years earlier. He suggested rather that an old stone mill building be bought and redesigned for the purpose. The centre of the mill was demolished and a new roof erected to accommodate a replica of Diaz’s caravel that was being built in Portugal to be sailed out (with Gabriel Fagan as first mate) to commemorate the historic event. The mill store was redesigned as a shell museum and the re-erected old granary as an extension of the museum. After an archaeologist had exposed the original aquifer and the surrounding landscape had been restored, the site was declared a National Heritage area.