Pretoria East is not the first place most people think to look for street art. The city’s eastern suburbs are better known for leafy streets, restaurant precincts, and shopping centres than walls covered in paint. Look properly, though, and a different picture begins to emerge.
A three-storey rhino watches over a student residence in Lynnwood Glen. A brightly coloured baker welcomes visitors to a cakery in Maroelana. Bronze animals occupy the walkways between Hazelwood’s restaurants, while monumental human figures interrupt the polished architecture of Menlyn Maine.
This is not an underground graffiti scene in the traditional sense. Much of the art is commissioned, carefully placed, and connected to the businesses or buildings around it. That does not make it less interesting. In several cases, the artist has used an ordinary commercial wall to create something that changes how the whole space feels.
Hazelwood is the best place to start, but the trail stretches into Lynnwood, Menlyn, and nearby Hatfield once you know where to look.
Public Art in Hazelwood
Hazelwood has the strongest concentration of public-facing art in Pretoria East. The Old East Precinct has become one of the city’s busiest food and lifestyle destinations, but its visual appeal is not limited to restaurant terraces and good-looking storefronts. Murals, sculptures, and smaller decorative works are built into the experience of moving between The Village, Village Walk, and The Club.
You could visit purely for breakfast and still come across several pieces without actively searching. That accidental quality is part of what makes the precinct work. The art does not sit apart from daily life. It appears beside coffee shops, across restaurant walls, and along the pedestrian routes people already use.
The Village Community Mural
The large mural covering a corner façade at The Village is the precinct’s most obvious burst of colour. A stylised female figure sits at the centre of the composition, surrounded by blocks of yellow, pink, blue, and purple that make the building difficult to pass without looking twice.
The design came from Layla Fouché, then a Grade 10 learner at Pretoria High School for Girls. Her artwork won a community competition that received more than 3,200 submissions. Dulux South Africa and colour expert Palesa Ramaisa subsequently helped translate the design onto the building, using more than 125 litres of paint over four weeks.
The wall previously carried a set of angel wings that had become a familiar photographic backdrop. Rather than simply repainting them, the precinct used the upgrade to give a young Pretoria artist a much larger canvas. The result still functions as a selfie spot, but there is a real local story behind the colour.
Where: The Village, 16th Street, Hazelwood
Best for: Bold colour, portraits, and an easy starting point for the route
Artist: Designed by Layla Fouché and produced with Dulux South Africa
Bakehouse’s Coffee Mural
Further into The Village, the mural wrapping around Bakehouse feels entirely at home beside the smell of coffee and the morning crowd. Green dominates the design, with orange, white, and teal details depicting cups, café equipment, flowing steam, and a barista at work.
Pretoria artist Christopher MacClements created the work. He has treated the building as part of the composition, working around windows, corners, vents, and changes in the wall rather than placing one flat picture on an empty surface. The subject matter is connected directly to the café, but the work never feels like an oversized menu board. It has enough movement, character, and scale to stand on its own.
Where: Bakehouse, The Village, Hazelwood
Best for: Contemporary illustration and art that responds to architecture
Artist: Christopher MacClements
Aroma’s Toucan Mural
A large toucan marks the entrance to Aroma Coffee Roastery and has become another recognisable part of The Village. Its bright plumage and oversized scale give the entrance more personality than the average coffee-shop sign could manage.
This one sits closer to decorative branding than independent street art, but the distinction matters less when you are standing in front of it. It contributes to the precinct’s broader visual character and gives the Hazelwood route another easy photographic stop.
Where: Aroma Coffee Roastery, The Village
Best for: Playful animal imagery and an easy coffee stop
Artist: Not publicly confirmed
Angus Taylor’s Art at Village Walk and The Club
Hazelwood’s public art continues beyond its painted walls. Village Walk, the pedestrian route connecting The Village and The Club, was designed around courtyards, seating, restaurants, and art that people encounter as they move through the precinct.
The bronze rhinos by acclaimed Pretoria sculptor Angus Taylor are the clear standouts. Their textured surfaces and physical weight make them feel almost prehistoric against the clean lines of the surrounding development. They are grounded, imposing, and close enough to examine properly rather than view from across a gallery barrier.
Taylor’s presence in Hazelwood predates Village Walk. His documented 2018 work Dink aan die kleure van ons klippe was created for The Club and uses different types of unpainted stone. It suits an artist whose work regularly draws attention to earth, landscape, material, and the uneasy relationship between natural forms and built environments.
This is where Hazelwood’s art offering becomes more than a collection of attractive restaurant murals. The sculpture gives the precinct weight and turns the walk between two retail nodes into something worth slowing down for.
Where: Village Walk and The Club, between Oaktree Avenue, Pinaster Avenue, and 18th Street
Best for: Monumental sculpture and tactile materials
Artist: Angus Taylor
Public Art in Maroelana
Maroelana sits directly beside Hazelwood and often gets folded into the same lifestyle conversation. It has fewer documented public works, but two particularly colourful murals make the short detour worthwhile.
Leona’s Cakery Murals
Leona’s Cakery has turned its exterior into a suitably theatrical welcome with two colourful murals positioned on either side of the venue’s entrance. Both depict stylised bakers surrounded by whisks, spoons, spatulas, leaves, and other playful details drawn from the world of baking. The first figure has short pink hair and holds a decorated cake against a warm orange background. Across the entrance, a second pink-haired figure presents another elaborate cake, framed by softer pink and blue tones. Together, the murals create a balanced composition across the façade rather than functioning as two unrelated pieces.
There is no attempt at understatement here, nor should there be. Leona’s is a place where visitors decorate cakes, attend creative workshops, and arrive expecting something more playful than an ordinary café visit. The murals tell you exactly what kind of world you are entering before you reach the door.
Where: 19 Maroelana Street, Maroelana
Best for: Character illustration, colourful photographs, and pairing art with cake
Artist: Not publicly confirmed
Public Art at the University of Pretoria and in Hatfield
Hatfield brings together one of Pretoria’s strongest collections of outdoor sculpture. Across the University of Pretoria campus and nearby community spaces, artworks appear beside libraries, gardens, walkways, and busy city streets.
The Art Beyond Walls Sculpture Route
The University of Pretoria’s Hatfield campus contains one of the city’s most substantial outdoor sculpture collections. The Art Beyond Walls route brings together more than 29 works displayed among the campus gardens, historical buildings, and pedestrian spaces.
Artists represented include Edoardo Villa, Guy du Toit, Anton Smit, Angus Taylor, Isaac Seoka, Berco Wilsenach, Zoltan Borbereki, and Willem de Sanderes Hendrikz. Visitors can choose between a wheelchair-friendly route taking approximately 30 minutes and a longer walk of roughly 90 minutes.
One of the route’s most interactive landmarks is the RMB THINK Bench between the Merensky Library and Student Centre. The 13-metre, ten-ton concrete work was designed by Louis Olivier and his team from Wrkhorse Bronze Foundry. Assistant artists Allen Laing and Nkhensani Rihlampfu were mentored during its creation. From one position, the bench spells out the word “THINK”. Move around it, and the letters dissolve into life-sized figures captured in different thinking poses. It is also genuinely functional, with room for more than 20 people to sit.
Unlike a formal gallery visit, the route allows you to encounter the sculptures within the daily movement of the campus. Works appear beside paths, lawns, libraries, and lecture buildings, turning an ordinary walk through UP into something closer to an open-air exhibition.
The campus operates controlled access, so outside visitors should bring identification and confirm whether a visitor’s pass, advance booking, or guided tour is required.
Where: University of Pretoria, Hatfield campus
Best for: A concentrated introduction to South African sculpture
Angus Taylor’s Sculptures at Moja Gabedi
Moja Gabedi occupies a former dumping ground on Festival Street that the University of Pretoria transformed into a community garden and engagement space. Among the vegetable beds, canals, therapy facilities, and gathering areas are two substantial sculptures created by Angus Taylor with help from UP students and members of the surrounding community.
Both works depict the same young man but use very different materials. One is constructed from rock, while the other was formed from compacted soil and grass. The materials carry much of the meaning. Neither has conventional commercial value, and both connect the human figure directly to the ground on which the community project was built.
The setting gives the sculptures a context that a polished retail precinct cannot provide. They stand within a space reclaimed from neglect and shaped through collective work, making participation part of the story rather than an incidental detail.
Moja Gabedi remains an active community project, so access should be confirmed with the university before visiting.
Where: Festival Street, near the University of Pretoria’s Hatfield campus
Artist: Angus Taylor, working with students and community members
Best for: Community-created sculpture, unusual materials, and socially engaged public art
Public Art in and Around Lynnwood
The wider Lynnwood area contains two very different examples of contemporary public art. A conservation mural rises across a student residence in Lynnwood Glen, while animal sculptures bring an unexpected sense of humour to a lifestyle precinct in Lynnwood Manor.
The WWF Rhino Mural at Parq City
A three-storey rhino occupies the exterior of Parq City Apartments, a residential development in Lynnwood Glen offering student accommodation near Varsity College. Christopher MacClements created the approximately 70-square-metre mural with WWF South Africa. The scale does much of the initial work: you notice the animal before you understand why it is there. Look longer, and the piece shifts from a dramatic wildlife image into something more urgent: a reminder that one of South Africa’s most recognisable species remains under pressure.
The mural is part of a wider series MacClements created for Parq's student residences. The project began as four works and has since expanded to five murals across Pretoria. Other documented locations include Parq Lite near the University of Pretoria and a Parq residence close to Loftus. These remain operating residential properties rather than formal art attractions. View the mural from a suitable public position, stay clear of entrances, and do not enter controlled areas for photographs.
Where: Parq City Apartments, Lynnwood Glen
Artist: Christopher MacClements, in partnership with WWF South Africa
Best for: Wildlife imagery, conservation themes, and imposing mural scale
Angus Taylor’s Sculptures at Lynnwood Bridge
Across the N1 in Lynnwood Manor, Lynnwood Bridge displays a very different kind of public art. Its documented permanent works include Angus Taylor’s Grounded,Ungrounded I and II, installed in 2011, while his donkey sculptures have become particularly closely associated with the precinct.
Donkeys are not the obvious choice for a polished lifestyle centre, which is precisely why they work. Taylor’s animal figures resist the heroic grandeur normally associated with public monuments, bringing humour and earthiness into the commercial setting.
Visitors can walk around the works, examine their surfaces, and then continue to the precinct’s restaurants, shops, or Atterbury Theatre.
Where: Lynnwood Bridge, 4 Daventry Road, Lynnwood Manor
Artist: Angus Taylor
Best for: Contemporary South African sculpture and art with an understated sense of humour
Public Art in Menlyn Maine
Menlyn Maine offers a different kind of public-art experience. Everything here is polished, planned, and contemporary, which makes Anton Smit’s monumental human figures feel even more forceful when they appear between the glass, steel, and concrete.
Anton Smit’s Sculptures at Central Square
Smit is known for oversized heads, fragmented bodies, and figures that seem caught somewhere between breaking apart and coming together. Their surfaces carry visible texture, giving the works a vulnerability that contrasts with their physical size.
Central Square introduced Smit as its first exhibiting artist as part of an effort to make art visible outside conventional galleries. His presence in the precinct has included The Spirit of Tshwane, conceived as a defining sculpture for the wider development.
The works reward movement. From a distance, they read as monumental shapes. Up close, the cracks, rough surfaces, and expressions become more important than their scale.
Displays may change, so confirm the current installation if you are travelling to see one sculpture in particular. Otherwise, arrive without a checklist and let the pieces find you.
Where: Central Square, Menlyn Maine
Artist: Anton Smit
Best for: Monumental figurative sculpture and dramatic architectural photographs
How to Explore Pretoria East’s Public Art
Hazelwood is the easiest part of the guide to explore on foot. Begin with the community mural at The Village, find the Bakehouse and Aroma works, and then follow Village Walk towards Angus Taylor’s sculptures and The Club. Give yourself a full morning rather than rushing between stops. The precinct makes more sense when there is time for coffee, breakfast, or an unplanned lunch along the way.
Leona’s Cakery is a short drive away in Maroelana. From there, the route continues through Parq City in Lynnwood Glen, Lynnwood Bridge in Lynnwood Manor, and Central Square at Menlyn Maine. These destinations are spread across Pretoria East, so use a car or ride-hailing service rather than attempting to connect them on foot.
Treat Hatfield and the University of Pretoria as a separate extension. The Art Beyond Walls route and RMB THINK Bench sit on UP’s controlled-access campus, while Moja Gabedi is an active community project on Festival Street. Bring identification, confirm visitor arrangements beforehand, and allow at least 30 minutes for the shorter university sculpture route.
Remember that these works occupy functioning cafés, retail precincts, residential properties, university grounds, and community spaces. Stay within publicly accessible areas, avoid obstructing entrances, and ask permission before arranging a commercial or professional photoshoot.
Pretoria East’s public art rewards the same thing the suburbs themselves do: paying attention. The murals are not gathered beneath one sign, and the sculptures do not always arrive with detailed plaques. They appear beside coffee shops, between restaurants, along campus paths, and across walls that might otherwise have been ignored. Once you begin looking, the eastern side of the city feels considerably more colourful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which part of Pretoria East has the most public art?
Hazelwood has the strongest walkable concentration. The Village, Village Walk, and The Club bring together community murals, commercial commissions, and sculptures by Angus Taylor within a relatively compact precinct.
Where can I find murals in Pretoria East?
Notable examples include the community-designed façade at The Village, Christopher MacClements’ Bakehouse mural, Aroma’s toucan artwork, the exterior mural at Leona’s Cakery in Maroelana, and the WWF rhino mural at Parq City in Lynnwood Glen.
Where can I see outdoor sculpture in Pretoria East?
Village Walk and The Club in Hazelwood display works by Angus Taylor, including prominent bronze rhinos. More of Taylor’s sculptures appear at Lynnwood Bridge, while Central Square at Menlyn Maine has exhibited monumental figurative works by Anton Smit. The University of Pretoria’s Art Beyond Walls route offers the largest concentrated collection included in this guide.
What is the Art Beyond Walls Sculpture Route?
Art Beyond Walls is an outdoor route through the University of Pretoria’s Hatfield campus. It includes more than 29 sculptures by South African artists, with a shorter wheelchair-friendly route taking approximately 30 minutes and an extended route lasting roughly 90 minutes. Campus access is controlled, so visitors should confirm current arrangements before arriving.
Does it cost anything to view public art in Pretoria East?
The murals and sculptures in Hazelwood, Maroelana, Lynnwood, and Menlyn Maine can generally be viewed without an admission fee because they occupy retail precincts, business exteriors, or publicly visible walls. University tours or organised experiences may carry a fee, and access to the UP campus and Moja Gabedi should be confirmed in advance.