At the foot of the Simonsberg in the Franschhoek wine valley, a Cape Dutch werf whose life the farm dates to 1692, when Governor Simon van der Stel granted the land to Pieter van der Byl. Karen Roos, formerly editor-in-chief of South African Elle Decoration, bought it in 2007, commissioned a garden before anything else, and opened the farm to the public in November 2010. It is the register’s case of a hotel that was built outward from a vegetable garden.
The house
The farm dates its life to 1692, a grant from Simon van der Stel to Pieter van der Byl, and its manor house to 1777. A press piece it hosts gives the award as 1690 instead, and records leiwater streams carrying river water across the ground for about three hundred years. Roos bought the property in 2007 and oversaw a restoration of about three years. She engaged the French architect Patrice Taravella to design a fruit and vegetable garden, implemented by Terry de Waal, before the farm became a place to stay. It covers eight acres in fifteen blocks, holds more than 350 varieties, and honours the Company’s Garden of 1652.
The farm opened to the public in November 2010. Babel occupies a refurbished cowshed given Cape Dutch gables and glass walls; Greenhouse and the Old Bakery are informal. Accommodation is grouped as Farmhouse, Manor House, Garden Cottages and Fynbos Cottages; no room count is published. Klaas Stoffberg is winemaker and Charl Coetzee cellar master; the range is four whites, four reds, a Provençal-style rosé and the Cap Classique Sprankel, with small batches in amphorae, cement fermenters and concrete eggs. It is one of six places under the same hand, among them The Newt in Somerset, BLOU at Keurboomstrand and Vignamaggio in Chianti, whose cellar has worked since 1404.
What distinguishes it
The garden came first and the house followed it Roos bought the farm in 2007 and commissioned Patrice Taravella to design an eight-acre fruit and vegetable garden of fifteen blocks, modelled on the Company’s Garden of 1652. Babylonstoren opened to the public only in November 2010. The farm still describes the garden as the thing that shapes its hotel, spa, shop and restaurants, rather than the reverse.
The founding date is given twice, and both figures come from the farm Babylonstoren’s own FAQ says “the farm’s life started in 1692, when Governor Simon van der Stel granted land to Pieter van der Byl”. A magazine piece hosted on the farm’s own site says the farm “was originally awarded to Pieter van der Byl in 1690”. The register records both and reconciles neither.
The number of cultivars is also disputed, and the range is deliberately short The hosted press piece says the estate makes its wine from eleven cultivars. The standard range is four whites, four reds, one Provençal-style rosé and one Cap Classique, Sprankel; MoneyWeek records Chardonnay as the flagship and the rosé as 100 per cent Mourvèdre. Everything beyond that is small-batch, in amphorae, open cement fermenters and concrete eggs, under winemaker Klaas Stoffberg and cellar master Charl Coetzee.
One of its sister properties cannot be booked by a stranger BLOU at Keurboomstrand, eight self-catering cottages where the Tsitsikamma mountains meet the Indian Ocean, is open only to guests who have already stayed at Babylonstoren or at The Newt in Somerset. The other sisters are Vignamaggio in Chianti, with a cellar working since 1404, Over-Amstel Boerderij of 1894 near Amsterdam, and The Story of Emily in Cornwall.
It is a day-visit farm with a hotel inside it Entry is R190 for an adult and free for anyone under eighteen, and RHS members enter free. The garden, the Farm Shop, the tasting cellar, the Garden Spa and Soetmelksvlei all operate for visitors who are not staying. The farm publishes no room count for the hotel at all.
A guest who wants a private estate will be sharing the werf, the garden paths and the restaurants with paying day visitors throughout opening hours. A guest who wants a deep vertical wine list of one estate will find a short range of ten or so labels and a farm whose centre of gravity is horticultural. The farm does not publish how many rooms it has, so the scale of the hotel cannot be judged before arrival.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.