150 years ago, the site of the Big Hole was a fea­ture­less, flat-topped hill. When word spread that dia­monds had been dis­cov­ered, thou­sands of prospec­tors, armed with noth­ing more than picks, shov­els and hope, descend­ed on Kim­ber­ley and cre­at­ed the largest hand-dug exca­va­tion in the world. Kim­ber­ly is one of the most unique and authen­tic his­tor­i­cal des­ti­na­tions in South Africa, because of the Kim­ber­ley dia­mond mine, which occu­pies a sur­face of 17 hectares, 463 meters wide, for a depth of 240 meters, and it used to be active since 1871 to 1914. The Big Hole in Kim­ber­ley is con­sid­ered for one of the deep­est cav­i­ties exca­vat­ed by man with a depth of 200 m². Next to the Big Hole is the Kim­ber­ley Mine Muse­um, the first ever dis­cov­ery of dia­mond reserves in the coun­try.