Near the centre of the square is a hand-operated pump used to bring clean water to the surface from an underground river that runs through the city.

During the apartheid era, Greenmarket Square was often the focus of political protests, due in part to its proximity to parliament, as well as the ethnicity of its traders and shoppers.

In the years following Cape Town's establishment in 1652 a number of streets came into existence above Strand Street (which followed the natural shoreline) and the Company Gardens which initially functioned as a market garden run by the Dutch East India Company to supply ships.

Following its establishment as a market the square became the administrative and social centre of the town with the construction of a burger watch house in 1696 to provide security.

[1] By the 1730s rural style thatch-roofed dwellings around the square began to be replaced by flat-roofed single and multiple story houses.

[6] In the late-1980s the parking lot was replaced with a flea market trading African curios and crafts and rented out to private vendors.