The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of cultural villages and living museums in Namibia. The concept of a cultural village, living museum or open air museum is being promoted as the magic formula for the answer to rural development. The Joint Programme Document of the UN/Spain project on "Sustainable cultural tourism in Namibia" identifies the creation of cultural villages as a way of alleviating poverty among the rural population in Namibia. The late former Minister of National Service, Youth, Sport and Culture, Kazenambo Kazenambo advocated cultural villages to "take a central place in Namibia's tourism package". This paper is located in cultural tourism studies. It interrogates the concept of a cultural village as applied in the Namibian context. The paper investigates the viability of cultural villages using the Uukwaludhi royal homestead as a case study. Using visitors' statistics (from Uukwaludhi royal homestead), we argue that cultural villages on their own are not viable income generation projects and therefore cannot be catalysts for rural poverty alleviation. Instead, cultural villages are useful for preserving local knowledge systems in the same way museums do. We posit further that cultural villages can stimulate other affiliate projects that can assist in alleviating poverty in rural settings if the unique socio-cultural and environmental characteristics of a given cultural village are harnessed. Keywords: Cultural villages, sustainable cultural tourism, cultural entrepreneurship.