Johannesburg’s Carlton Hotel, once the pinnacle of luxury in South Africa, has been vacant for more than 20 years and is just a shadow of what it used to be in its glory days. The Carlton Centre ...

Wealthy tourists stayed in the Carlton Hotel, the preferred site for banquets and conferences. Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter.

Johannesburg - Door knobs are being polished, elevators and toilets fixed up, and 1970's style furniture and decor brought back to parts of Johannesburg's Carlton Hotel - empty and unused since 1997.

That’s where the Carlton Centre got left behind. The Johannesburg city centre, once vibrant and cosmopolitan, fell victim to urban flight, municipal neglect and rising crime rates.

Just north of downtown Johannesburg, Sandton's fine dining, world-class resorts, and shopping opportunities make it the perfect retreat from hectic city life.

Even the five-star Carlton Hotel, where Nelson Mandela celebrated his election victory in 1994, was shuttered. Stores in the shopping mall in the adjoining Carlton Centre gradually closed, until ...

The hotel, which forms part of the Carlton Centre complex, hosted the who’s who in entertainment and politics but was closed and mothballed in 1997.

It’s the same story in the former Carlton Hotel on the site, a 600-bed house on 30 floors. Street crime and general decline ruined business.