Shanghai History Museum

The Shanghai History Museum occupies the building of the former Shanghai Race Club on People's Square, put up in 1934 with a clock tower and a colonnade. The display is laid out over four floors and leads from the fishing villages at the mouth of the Yangtze to the treaty port and the factories of the early twentieth century. In the halls stand a model of the flat-bottomed Shanghai junk called the shachuan, which gave the city its old coat of arms, and a huge carved wedding palanquin covered in tiers of gilded carving. Separate rooms are recreated as living interiors of the concessions, with tiled floors, playbills and furniture of the 1930s. Admission to the museum is free but by ticket, which is booked in advance, and on Mondays it is closed.

On the map