Kolmanskop
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A much fabled ghost town and now a major tourist attraction in the desert to the east of Lüderitz in the south of Namibia. The German-style buildings of this once extremely rich (due to a diamond rush) town are slowly being taken over by the encroaching desert sand – and the result is fabulously photogenic. Hence the photo gallery that this chapter comes with is one of the most substantial galleries on this website.
More background info: The name allegedly derives from a certain Johnny Coleman of the Nama people (see history). Legend has it that he once got his ox cart stuck on the hillside that the present ghost town is located on (some sources even say he died there of thirst, but others do not make this claim).
In German the name is “Kolmanskuppe” – ‘Coleman’s hill’ – which after the end of the German colonial era in South West Africa was later changed to the Afrikaans “Kolmanskop”, which would rather translate as ‘Coleman’s head’.
Nearby Lüderitz, founded by a German colonialist of the same name in the 1880s, was connected by a railway line to Keetmanshoop nearly 200 miles (300 km) further inland (and later itself connected to the line to the capital Windhoek). And Kolmanskop became one of the stations along this railway.
The shifting desert sand frequently had to be cleared off the tracks. Sometime in April 1908 a railway worker named Zacharias Lewala, who had previously worked at the Kimberley diamond mine in South Africa, was shovelling sand off the line when he spotted a raw diamond on his shovel. His foreman August Stauch had instructed his labourers to look out for and hand over any shiny stones they might find (as he had heard of Adolf Lüderitz’s hunch that there should be diamonds around here). Lewala dutifully did so – and for him that was the end of the story. He never got a reward or anything for his discovery.
Instead Stauch quickly secured a 75-acre claim (some sources say 75 square kilometres) around Kolmanskop and began systematically prospecting for diamonds. He and his business partner had initially kept quiet about the discovery, but soon word of mouth got round and a veritable diamond rush set in as more and more prospectors came to Lüderitz to try and get their share of the riches.
The German colonial government reacted by reigning in the chaos of the rush and tried to bring order to the exploding industry. The whole vast area along the southern coast between Lüderitz and the border with South Africa was declared a “Sperrgebiet”, or ‘forbidden zone’. No one was allowed in without a permit and people leaving could be searched to check that they weren’t smuggling diamonds out of the zone. This regime still applies up to the present day! (See also Pomona and Elizabeth Bay.)
Initially diamonds could simply be picked up from the desert sand by hand – there’s a legend that one moonlit night Stauch saw loads of diamonds glistening in the moonlight and exclaimed “Es ist ein Märchen, ein Märchen” (‘it’s a fairy tale’) as he pocketed bag-loads of diamonds … hence the location is still referred to as “Märchental” (‘fairy tale valley’). Later the desert sand was sifted through mechanically in order to extract further diamonds. By 1912, the diamond operations of Kolmanskop supplied 10% of the world market for these precious stones. Stauch, and others, became incredibly rich.
Kolmanskop evolved into a luxurious settlement, with a peak population of ca. 350. Grand stone mansions in a German architectural style were built for the elite, such as the mine director, but the rest of the population also benefited from state-of-the-art amenities otherwise unheard of in Africa at the time. These included an ice factory (for residents’ ice-cooled fridges, or ‘ice boxes’), a butcher’s, a general store, a large community centre with a concert hall and a bowling alley, various other sports facilities, a school (for up to 50 pupils), an electric substation providing power to homes, and a well-equipped hospital, which featured all kinds of modern apparatus, such as the very first X-ray machine in southern Africa. Kolmanskop and nearby Lüderitz reputedly became the wealthiest places in all of Africa.
Following the outbreak of WW1, Germany’s colonial period in Africa quickly ended (see also Aus), and the territory of South West Africa came under South African administration, including Kolmanskop. The company Consolidated Diamond Mines of South West Africa (CDM) was founded, which was later incorporated into the eminent De Beers Group.
However, the diamond deposits around Kolmanskop were beginning to get depleted. And the discovery in 1928 of the richest ever diamond deposits near the Orange River at the southernmost end of the “Sperrgebiet” led to another diamond rush and many of Kolmanskop’s residents abandoned their homes to head south and take part in the new diamond rush. Others however held on. Yet decline continued through the 1930s and 40s, and somewhere between 1956 and 1959 (again, sources vary) the last residents gave up and moved out too. Since then Kolmanskop has been a complete ghosts town.
Long simply forgotten, Kolmanskop was first partially rediscovered during the 1980s, with the centenary of the founding of nearby Lüderitz, which was enjoying an economically prosperous phase. Some of Kolmanskop’s buildings were cleared of the sand and some restoration took place.
But it was only from the early 2000s that Kolmanskop began to thrive as a proper tourist attraction, with more restoration work done, added historical exhibitions, guided tours, an on-site cafeteria/restaurant and a souvenir shop.
Images from Kolmanskop’s eerily sand-filled interiors appeared in popular magazines (e.g. in a feature in National Geographic in 2009), which further boosted the appeal of this ghost town. Today it has to rank as one of the best known and most visited places in that category, receiving some 35,000 visitors each year.
What there is to see: Quite a lot. Here’s a report of my visit in August 2022:
I invested in a photographer’s permit (see below), which allowed me access to the compound outside the regular opening hours, and so I made sure I got up very early and headed to Kolmanskop before sunrise. That gave me about an hour and a half before the gate opened to regular visitors, so for that time my wife and I had the whole place to ourselves (there were no other photographers around at that point). The atmosphere in the totally silent ghost town in the earliest light of the day – and moonlight – gave it an additionally eerie twist. And of course it was great for photography (tripod required, obviously). In fact, Kolmanskop in general is best represented through imagery, and the photo gallery below probably illustrates this more than any descriptive words can. But let’s go through some of the different locations within Kolmanskop:
I headed straight to the northern end of the town. It’s here where the grandest two-storey mansions can be found. This string of buildings is informally referred to as “Millionaires’ Row”, as it was here that the highest echelons of Kolmanskop’s population had their residences.
Set a bit aside from the rest of the town are two buildings that used to be the diamond mine’s director’s and the accountant’s houses, which are the grandest of all the private houses here. The director’s home was spruced up a few years ago. However, I was unable to visit these two houses as they were cordoned off. They were being used by a film crew as a set – and hence photography at or near them would have been prohibited too. I read after my visit, though, that the director’s house, grand as it may be, is actually less representative of Kolmanskop than the unrestored houses further south. So apparently I didn’t really miss out on a lot.
The other buildings on “Millionaires’ Row” include those marked “Architekt” (‘architect’), “Lehrer” (‘teacher’) and “Quartiermeister” (‘quartermaster’ or ‘administrator’), and a bit further south “Arzt” (‘doctor/physician’). The architect’s house is unrefurbished but one of the best preserved. It has a balcony you can access for good views. The house of the teacher is the most dilapidated of this set, the rear has collapsed and the interior is almost completely filled with sand. The administrator’s and doctor’s houses are in better shape and highly atmospheric. Some still feature some fittings, even bathtubs, half filled with desert sand! You can also see relatively intact old wallpaper, in very German style.
Just to the south of the doctor’s house is the “Krankenhaus”, i.e. the hospital, one of the largest buildings here. Abandoned hospitals are often particularly eerie, especially if there’s still some hospital equipment around, which is the case here. There are old bed frames, drips, even an incubator, and various other bits and pieces. I think what makes it so special is the contrast between the eerie silence and emptiness of an abandoned hospital with one that’s in use (hectic, loud, full of people and activity). The hospital also has the longest corridor of any building here, and doors with relatively intact glass windows in them. The rooms to the east-facing front are only slightly affected by sand, but those at the rear facing west, i.e. the hill behind the town, are being infiltrated by sand, so it was here that I could get some of those iconic photos of semi-sand-filled rooms, including toilets, the bowls half filled with sand too.
I spent a good while in the hospital and by the time I left, the sun had just crept above the horizon. So I headed back to “Millionaires’ Row” to photograph the interiors of those mansions with the earliest rays of sunlight atmospherically streaming in. By then, the gate had opened and the first regular tourists were arriving. But initially there weren’t too many of them, and there were only few occasions when we walked into each others’ frames.
Then I headed to the commercial part of the town, where there are shops and workshops. The first one was the “Schlachterei” (‘butcher’s workshop’), where some vats were still in situ that were used in the making of sausages (as I was later told on the guided tour – see below).
Next to this is the “Eisfabrik” (‘ice factory’) and inside are all manner of rusty machinery and liquid gas cylinders.
Then there’s the building marked “Ladenbesitzer” (‘shopkeeper’). Here the interior has been meticulously restored and furnished with period furniture brought in from elsewhere, but close enough to the German style that the originals would have been. There’s a living room, a study, a kitchen and two bedrooms. It looks like people could still be living here.
And then there is the associated “Laden” (‘shop’), the town’s general store. The inside is also refurbished but a bit more museum-like rather than recreating what it would have looked like back in the day. One side room is full of medical equipment, nurses’ dresses and some old signs. The main room has a long wooden counter and there are various items on display such as a sewing machine, a clothes mangle and a wooden school desk and bench. In addition there’s a large glass cabinet filled mostly with old empty bottles, including some with still familiar brand names.
Outside the shop are a few narrow-gauge railway carriages on display. They are of two types, one for passengers and the other for transporting barrels of drinking water – all fresh water had to be brought into this desert town from the outside and was hence one of the most precious commodities in Kolmanskop!
To the west of the shop stands the old German railway station sign saying “Kolmanskuppe” in old Gothic script. Further west still, but beyond a fence and hence off limits, is the town’s electric substation.
With the sun now further up I then walked back to the hospital to take additional photos of the interiors with more light now available than in the often rather dark gloom when I was first there before sunrise.
Afterwards I headed towards the southern part of the town, which is where the residential buildings of the less privileged residents lived, what you might call the “middle class” … also white colonialists – the black manual labourers who worked on contracts for the mine had their much more basic accommodation in a compound to the west, quite apart from the main Kolmanskop town. These you can see only from a distance as they, too, are out of bounds.
The residential buildings come in various stages of dilapidation, a couple are fenced off because they are too ruined and unsafe. Some others are partially collapsed, but you are allowed to go inside – at your own risk, as little signs by the doors point out. And indeed you have to be very careful here (see below).
It is in these houses that you can get some of the best of those iconic photos of sand-filled rooms – indoor dunes, as it were. In one of the southernmost houses I even spotted a totally untouched indoor dune with the typical wavy ripples intact. Clearly, fewer visitors make it as far as here. And indeed I encountered but a small handful of other tourists in these parts. Most seem to concentrate on the central and northern sections.
In one of these houses I even spotted various animal tracks on its indoor dunes – evidence of wildlife. These tracks were small, possibly left by rabbits, maybe jackals (which are frequently encountered in this part of Namibia), and there were also the telltale delicate double lines left by the tok-tokkie beetle (a highly adapted species that gets all its moisture for survival by performing a kind of headstand in the early morning coastal mist and letting the condensation run straight into its mouth). Outside I also found tracks left by brown hyenas.
Located in this part of town too is the former school building, which was another highlight. The rooms are bare and spacious and the front corridor was lovely in the morning light – and only partially covered with sand.
Then it was time to head to the large community centre in the middle of the northern half of the compound, namely to join the first free guided tour of the day. These are in German or English and I opted for the English one, mainly because it had a much smaller number of participants (only a good dozen, whereas the German group was at least twice that number).
The tour started in the main hall of the fully restored community centre (or “Kasino” in German, which in this case does not translate as ‘casino’, even though you see just that on many an English-language website about Namibia’s German colonial-era ghost towns). This is on the upper floor and used to be the town’s concert hall and/or theatre. These days there are also various gymnastics apparatus and an old German sign behind them says “Turn Verein Kolmannskuppe” (so ‘gymnastics club Kolmanskop’).
We were shown the large kitchen with its enormous black cast-iron stove, and then taken to part of the museum section, where we were told the basics of the history of the place and the beginning of the diamond rush (see above). We then left the upper level and went to the “Kegelbahn” (‘bowling alley’) on the ground floor. Our guide even demonstrated the bowling ball retrieval system, still in perfect working order.
After that we headed for the part of town with the workshops where the guide explained a bit about the production of ice in the “Eisfabrik” (in the bowling alley we had already been shown one of the ‘ice box’ fridges from the period). We then proceeded to the general store, and I was glad I had already done all my photography there earlier without other people around.
After the tour, back at the community centre, the two exhibitions in the museum section needed closer inspection. The first, a general history one (of both Kolmanskop and the whole Sperrgebiet with its other mines and ghost towns), includes lots of period black-and-white photographs as well as documents, newspaper clippings, maps, etc., but very few artefacts (some mine workers’ clothing, two saddles and glass display cabinets with little trinkets and ceramics).
A separate exhibition is about diamond smuggling and explains the various more or less ingenious ways in which people have tried to illicitly get diamonds out of the Sperrgebiet, e.g. by carrier pigeon (!), hidden in shoes’ heels or even in one’s rectum (which made me remember the doors marked “search room” in the high-security checkpoints for the tours into the Sperrgebiet – see Pomona and Elizabeth Bay).
There’s also a large curio shop in the community centre selling a wide range of wares, including souvenirs and T-shirts. Adjacent is a cafeteria too, which also doubles up as another exhibition room, with lots of interesting period photos and artefacts displayed along the walls. But primarily it offers drinks and food, not just the home-made cakes on display but also full savoury lunches such as fishcakes and fish platters. I had the latter and it was very tasty – and quite welcome as we had skipped breakfast in order to make it to Kolmanskop really early before sunrise.
Note that the actual diamond mine area with the ruins of its processing plant is another part of Kolmanskop that is not accessible to tourists. You can only see those sections in the far distance from the southernmost parts of the town (especially the school). However, on my tour to Elizabeth Bay the day before we made a short stop much closer to these ruins and that’s when I took the photos of these parts featured in the gallery below.
All in all, I must say that Kolmanskop really has its reputation for good reason. For photographers it absolutely is a playground second to none. I took some 250 photos in just a few hours – and it could easily have been more. The atmosphere, especially early in the morning, is wonderfully eerie, in a magical, picturesque way. Later it does get a little touristy perhaps, but rarely so much that I found it too crowded, except perhaps during the guided tour.
By the way, I noticed that the second guided tour at 11 a.m. had only a couple of people on it. So if you have the time maybe rather wait for that one instead of rushing to the first one at 9:30.
So overall a visit to this gem of a ghost town with its intriguing history and iconic desert intrusions is absolutely worth it and was a definite highlight of my Namibia trip in the summer of 2022. Highly recommended.
Location: some 6 miles (10 km) east of the harbour town of Lüderitz in southern Namibia, just off the main B4 trunk road and railway line to Keetmanshoop 200 miles (300 km) further inland to the west.
Google Maps locators:
Gate and outside parking: [-26.70178, 15.23195]
Community Centre and main parking lot: [-26.7028, 15.2311]
Mine director’s and accountant’s houses: [-26.7018, 15.2285]
Architect’s house: [-26.7025, 15.2299]
Doctor’s house: [-26.7049, 15.2313]
Hospital: [-26.7054, 15.2318]
Workshops, general store and train carriages: [-26.7038, 15.2318]
“Middle-class” residential buildings: [-26.7079, 15.2314]
School: [-26.7091, 15.2307]
Inaccessible former mine area: [-26.7208, 15.2253]
Inaccessible former workers’ accommodation: [-26.7012, 15.2378]
Turn-off from the main B4 road: [-26.6951, 15.2379]
‘Desert Deli’ in Lüderitz selling permits: [-26.6456, 15.1543]
Access and costs: a bit restricted; quite good value for money.
Details: Unless you’re on an organized tour by coach that includes Kolmanskop (many do), or with a private driver-guide, you need your own vehicle to get to there. This is easy from nearby Lüderitz, where almost all visitors also stay overnight (there’s no accommodation or camping right at Kolmanskop). Just drive out of town on the main B4 road and after 6 miles (10 km) turn right. You’ll already see the ghost town on the hillside – it’s impossible to miss. Follow the track and turn right again towards the gate – it’s also well marked. Within regular hours (see below) you can drive in and use the main car park by the community centre; if you have a special permit and come outside the regular hours use the smaller car park just outside the main gate.
Since Kolmanskop lies just inside the “Sperrgebiet”, the restricted diamond mining area south and east of Lüderitz, you need a permit to get in. But unlike the ones for the tours deeper into the Sperrgebiet (see Pomona and Elizabeth Bay), the permits for Kolmanskop are easy to obtain, even just on arrival at the gate.
This gate’s regular opening times are from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.; and the cost for a regular permit is just 100 N$ (ca. 5.50 EUR) – for access outside these hours you need a special permit that you have to obtain in advance:
This is, somewhat confusingly, called a “photographer’s permit”, even though regular visitors with the normal permit are also allowed to take photos. And it’s for “amateur photography” only (professionals have to make special arrangements and pay a rather hefty fee). This special permit has to be obtained at least a day in advance, but no longer from Lüderitz Safaris & Tours on Bismarck Street, as many guidebooks and websites still say, but now from a special desk inside the Desert Deli café and shop next to the town’s central fuel station on the parallel Bahnhof Street! It’s unclear whether you could also buy a photographer’s permit at the gate at Kolmanskop, for the next day, say, so I’d recommend playing it safe and getting the permit in Lüderitz. When you reach the closed gate, park in the space next to it and leave your permit clearly visible for security behind the windscreen of your vehicle. You’ll be given a code with which to let yourself in at the gate – though when I was there, a guard was letting in a service truck and just waved me through the open gate after the truck, so I can’t say how exactly the code-entering would have worked.
The cost for the photographer’s permit is, at the time of writing, 320 N$ (ca. 18 EUR); when I was there in August 2022 it was still just under 300 N$, and my 2019 guidebook said 200 N$, so prices do seem to keep on going up. But even though a photographer’s permit costs more than three times the regular admission fee it’s an investment well worth it, at least for keen photographers.
The advantage is not only that you can be there for sunrise, more importantly you’ll usually have the place to yourself before the crowds arrive – and that enhances the ghost town atmosphere substantially. So it’s worth it for that alone. That said, if you’re not so enthusiastic about photography and don’t mind sharing the place with others, you can just as well make do with the regular permit. It only gets really crowded at and around the community centre and on the earlier guided tour. The buildings to the south may still be largely free of people (regular tourists tend to give these parts a miss).
Note that many of the buildings you are free to explore are quite dilapidated. You can enter at your own risk, but, as little signs point out, in several buildings there is a danger of unstable ceilings, walls and floors, which could collapse at any moment. Also take care with broken glass, rusty metal bits and suchlike on the ground, on the floors of the interiors and in the sand that is everywhere. There are said to be snakes around as well. So sturdy closed shoes are a must, long trousers are advisable too. Some visitors even crawl inside the less accessible parts of houses filled with sand dunes. Take extra care when doing that and wear appropriate clothing. In the mornings it can be quite cold, especially in winter, so bring layers; during the day temperatures go up, and in summer it can get positively hot, so make sure to also bring sufficient drinking water, sunscreen and a sun hat.
Adverse weather can be an issue as well. I was lucky when I was there, as it was a calm, clear morning. But at other times, and especially in the afternoon, wind can be a problem. If the wind gets strong you can get sandblasted, what with all those desert dunes about. And getting sand blown on or even into your camera could damage or kill it. So you’ll at least need a protective bag and cloths for wiping your camera clean. (Changing lenses should also be avoided, or only done in clean, calm corners indoors.) If there’s a sandstorm even, visiting could get very uncomfortable, if not impossible. Similarly in rain – but that is of a very low likelihood most of the year. The regular coastal mist, especially in the mornings, might on occasion reach as far inland as where Kolmanskop is. When I was there it was clear but I could see the fog banks in the distance not that far away.
Note also that both the regular permit and the special photographer’s permit allow free participation in the guided tours that are offered at 9:30 and 11 a.m., respectively (only one at 10 a.m. on Sundays). Tours are run in parallel in both English or German, and groups are split accordingly. These tours last about 45 to 60 minutes.
Time required: I’d say three hours is the absolute minimum. Fans of abandoned places, and especially keen photographers of such places, will need significantly longer. I spent about six hours there (including the guided tour and a lunch), but I can imagine that proper ruin enthusiasts and perfectionist photographers would need even longer, possibly all day (provided they have the prerequisite special permit for that – see above).
Combinations with other dark destinations: Kolmanskop is regularly combined with the nearby harbour town of Lüderitz, if only for the various accommodation options there. But Lüderitz also has its own dark history, in particular the site of the former concentration camp on Shark Island (now a peninsula easily reached by road).
Lüderitz is also the place from which tours deeper into the Sperrgebiet are run, in particular the all-day tour to Pomona and Bogenfels, as well as the half-day tour to the ghost town of Elizabeth Bay.
How do these other ghost towns compare to Kolmanskop? Well, both can only be reached by guided tour with a sturdy desert-worthy 4x4 and there’s only one operator with the concession to run these tours, so it’s more or less guaranteed that there will be nobody else around. So unlike in Kolmanskop, which during regular opening hours can get a bit busy, at Pomona and Elizabeth Bay you’ll gave the full ghost town atmosphere for yourself (unless you are in a bigger group, of course), in all its eerie silence and desolateness. In Pomona you have a similar desert setting to Kolmanskop and encounter buildings filled with rogue shifting sand dunes encroaching on the interiors – but as so few visitors come here the sand will almost always be untouched, pristine, without the thousands of footprints you usually encounter at Kolmanskop. Elizabeth Bay is a bit different due to its location close to the sea. There are hardly any sand dunes so you won’t see those typical sand-filled interiors as you get at Kolmanskop. However, wind erosion has sculpted some of the ruins into bizarre shapes. Moreover, unlike at Kolmanskop, you can also explore the rusty remains of the diamond processing plant, which adds an industrial element to the abandoned-places character. I found this quite an asset. Pomona also has a dilapidated diamond processing plant, here semi-filled with desert sand. Given the proximity to the sea, Elizabeth Bay is much more prone to get engulfed in coastal fog, which can also be highly photogenic. One significant difference between Kolmanskop and Pomona as well as (to a lesser extent) Elizabeth Bay is the price tag. These 4x4 tours are naturally much more expensive! In comparison Kolmanskop is an absolute bargain.
Outside the Sperrgebiet there are also the dark sites around Aus, which is only about an hour’s drive to the east along the B4.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: The nearby coastal town of Lüderitz may be a bit sleepy, but it sports some nice architectural gems from its early German-colonial era which are well worth seeing. It’s also the only place far and wide with facilities such as accommodation, restaurants, shops and fuel stations. So the combination of Kolmanskop with Lüderitz is almost inevitable.
That is: unless you stay in or around Aus and make the excursion to Kolmanskop from there and give Lüderitz a miss. You shouldn’t really, but it’s an option.
See also under Namibia in general.
