Durban — The Amphitheatre was designed by architect William Murray Jones and construction began in the 1930s when the city undertook a number of infrastructure projects to keep people employed during the Great Depression.
Regular Then & Now contributor Gerald Buttigieg, writing in Facts About Durban, said: “My late father-in-law, who was with the Works Department of the Durban Corporation, told me the gardens were built by Italian prisoners of war. I do not know where they were interred in Durban but I seem to remember there is a memorial to them in the Hillary cemetery. The Durban beachfront skyline looked quite different in those days ...”
The website francoforleo.co.za/ Zonderwater says the Italian POWs arrived in Durban after being captured in North Africa.
Most were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Zonderwater (now the site of a maximum security correctional services prison) in Cullinan, but many spent their years of confinement in Camp 4 in Pietermaritzburg, where they built the Pietermaritzburg Italian Church, also known as Our Lady of Mercy, in 1944.
Some were buried in the Hillary cemetery but were exhumed and moved to the Italian Church.
The gardens are now overlooked by the high-rise Elangeni, Maharani and Maluti flats built in the 1970s.
Hotel magnate Sol Kerzner built the Elangeni in 1971, followed by the five-star Maharani. The Maharani changed its name to the Southern Sun North Beach hotel in the 1990s after changes in ownership and was downgraded to four-star status.
In 2012, the two hotels were merged into a single operation to form the Southern Sun Elangeni and Maharani, creating the largest hotel in the southern hemisphere.
The Amphitheatre gardens is a peaceful park in the heart of the bustling Golden Mile where people can enjoy the calm of the surrounding pond, fountains, and subtropical plants.
The gardens had a make-over as part of the beachfront overhaul for the 2010 World Cup. But as Shelley Kjonstad’s picture taken last month suggests, they could do with some regular maintenance.
Independent on Saturday