Paarl

Town on the Great Berg River, Western Cape Province, South Africa; population (2001) 108,000; metropolitan area 194,900. It is the centre of a wine-producing area, 50 km/31 mi northeast of Cape Town. There are large jam and canning factories, flour mills and light industries, including plastics, textile mills, tobacco factories, and granite quarries.

Nelson Mandela served the last days of his imprisonment at the Victor Verster prison near here.

Some of South Africa's best wines are produced here, and the largest wine cellars in the world, those of the Ko-operative Wijnbouwers Vereniging, are at Paarl. It derives its name from three gigantic boulders which dominate the town and were thought to resemble a pearl. Many Black Africans live in the nearby townships of Mbekweni and Langabuya.