The spotlight falls on the mining town turned metropolis next week as the World Cup kicks off. DUNCAN CRAIG offers a guide to this underrated city, Johannesburg in South Africa

WERE it not for the gigantic billboards, the blanket media coverage, the digital countdown devices, the flag-lined streets and the enormous football impaled on the city's primary landmark, you'd perhaps never know that the World Cup was on its way to Johannesburg. It's South Africa's tournament, of course, but there is no doubting the epicentre of this gathering sporting and commercial storm.

South Africa's largest city will host no fewer than 15 games over the next month, including the two "marquee" matches - the opener and the final. Partisan, partyloving fans will turn Jo'burg, or Jozi, into a riot of colour. As the tournament progresses, so the decibels will rise, a cacophony of vuvuzelas (traditional horns) ringing out across the city from the township of Soweto to the affl uent suburb of Sandton.

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The city is not without its detractors: it's charmless and unsightly, they say. Danger, they'll tell you, is its middle name. But dig a little deeper and you'll find wonderfully picturesque pockets, a vibrant cultural scene and a proud, effervescent population desperate not to blow Africa's first bash at hosting the Greatest Show on Earth. Exercise the same caution as in any major capital and the only anguish you're likely to face is a defensive error by your team's back-four.

STAY
In post-democracy South Africa, few areas are off limits (the intrepid can even bed down in Sowetan B&Bs). Restrict your adventurousness to the daylight hours and stay in the leafy northern suburbs. Set in the compact but bustling neighbourhood of the same name, The Rosebank (dialling from UK: 0027 11 448 3600/ www.therosebank.co.za) is a pink-hued hotel whose anodyne looks belie a startlingly inventive interior. There's a spa and pool, and The Mall of Rosebank, one of Jo'burg's premier shopping spots, is a short walk away through a tunnel of purple-fl owering jacaranda trees. Doubles from £120 (B&B), two sharing.

Alternatively, dig deep for a night at the super-stylish Melrose Arch Hotel (21 430 5302/ www.africanpridehotels.com/melrosearch-hotel.html) which boasts two of the trendiest spots in town: the Library Bar, with its high-backed leather seats, tome-lined walls and presumably WAG-free clientele; and its roof pool-cum-art installation with semi-submerged furniture and mind-warping trees in oversized tin buckets. Doubles from £320 (B&B), two sharing.

GETTING AROUND
As throughout the country, public transport is limited and not advised for tourists. Opt for a hire car and budget for a spacious, air-conditioned model as your wheels will become like a second home during your stay (this is not a walking city). Europcar (0870 607 5000/www.europcar.co.uk) has a large presence at OR Tambo airport (formerly Jo'burg International). From £18 per day.

Johannesburg is an enthralling mix of the First and Developing Worlds. For the purposes of driving assume you're in the latter.

Signage is haphazard, gridlock common and lane discipline non-existent. On the plus side, South Africans drive on the left, fuel is cheap, parking ubiquitous and navigation is aided by a logical major road network (the N1 encircles the city, the M1 bisects it). Align yourself with a landmark such as the 882ft Hillbrow Tower (the one with the football) and you'll soon get your bearings.

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MUST-SEES
Even if you're not among the 94,700 ticket holders for each game here, head to Soccer City.
Shaped like a calabash (a traditional African pot) with twinkling terracotta and gold panels, this state-of-the-art stadium is surrounded by a large, bustling pedestrianised area.

Go on match days to WAG spot, mingle with those crazy Dutch fans or just soak up the World Cup's incomparable atmosphere.

Soccer City is on the fringes of Soweto. Once notorious, this sprawling township is today largely peaceful if frenetic. Most tours take in the likes of Mandela House, the restored, tiny red-brick dwelling that was home to the great man and latterly his family until the Nineties; and the powerful Hector Pieterson Museum, commemorating the 13-year-old schoolboy who was shot during a student protest in 1976, sparking the Soweto Uprising. Soweto Tours (www.soweto.co.za) offers half-day trips from £40 (four sharing). The Carlton Centre is the tallest building in Africa and unquestionably the ugliest. Avoid having to look at it by visiting the building's 50th-floor viewing area, Top of Africa, from which I picked out landmarks such as Constitution Hill, with its white fort once used for political prisoners, and the Springbok fortress of Ellis Park, Jo'burg's other World Cup venue.

MUST-DOS
The powerful Apartheid Museum (www.apartheidmuseum.org) is housed in a bunker-like building five miles south of the city. The museum features 22 intentionally claustrophobic exhibitions detailing the bloody struggle against state-sanctioned racial repression.

The room suspended with 131 nooses, each representing an executed political prisoner, is particularly poignant as is the realisation of how recently this paranoia-fuelled policy ended - just four World Cups have elapsed since Apartheid was abolished.

Adults £4.50, children £3.

Lighten the tone by dropping in to neighbouring Gold Reef City (www.goldreefcity.co.za) a theme park recreating Johannesburg's mining heyday. Children will love the 30-odd rides, including Africa's biggest Ferris wheels, while adults can pan for their own gold in the adjoining casino. Adults £12.50, children £8.

Beer is close to every football fan's heart. At South African Breweries' slickly interactive World of Beer (www.worldofbeer.co.za), in the regenerated CBD area of Newtown, theory and practice are on offer in abundance. Finish your 90-minute tour with a "frostie" on the terrace above Mary Fitzgerald Square, site of FIFA's official World Cup fan zone. Adults (only) £3.50.

EAT
Gramadoelas (www.gramadoelas.co.za), also in Newtown, has hosted everyone from the Queen to Mandela. The first restaurant in the city to be open to all colours, it tells the history of South Africa through its exotic and diverse menu and décor. Sample crocodile, Cape Dutch chicken pie and koesisters (a syrup-coated doughnut in a braided shape).

Sandton City's Nelson Mandela Square is the place for foodies, with a dozen top-end restaurants overseen by a 24ft statue of the former president. My pick of these is Lekgotla (www.lekgotla.com) serving African delicacies such as springbok carpaccio with warm pear and date salad, Ethiopian naan breads, and Zanzibar kingklip fillet topped with spicy peanut and curry sauce.

BEYOND THE CITY
The Cradle of Humankind (www.cradleofhumankind.co.za) is a World Heritage site an hour's drive north-west with 300 caves in which thousands of fossils have been unearthed. The award-winning Maropeng Visitor Centre (www.maropeng.co.za), itself evocative of a giant burial site, fills you in on the background; then head to nearby Sterkfontein, the most famous of the 15 major fossil sites in the area.

You'll want (in photographic terms) to bag and tag at least a couple of the Big Five. Two hours from Jo'burg is SANPark-managed Marakele National Park (www.sanparks.org/parks/marakele), a 250-square-mile conservation zone in Limpopo. There are lions, elephants and a high density of white rhino, while endangered Cape vultures soar above the stunning Waterberg Mountains.

Tented camps offer self-catering facilities and verandahs for that all-important braai (barbecue).

GETTING THERE:
South African Airways (0871 722 1111/www.flysaa.com) offers return flights to Johannesburg from £716.
South African Tourism: 0208 971 9350/www.southafrica.net/2010