Top choice
Set back in People’s Park alongside a pond, Barbarossa is all about escapism. Forget Shanghai: this is Morocco channelled by Hollywood set designers. The action gets steadily more intense as you ascend to the roof terrace, via the cushion-strewn 2nd floor, where the hordes puff on fruit-flavoured hookahs. At night, use the park entrance just east of the Shanghai History Museum building.
Happy hour (5pm to 8pm) is a good time to visit for two-for-one cocktails.
1.27 MILES
With its shaded alcoves, glittering pools churning with fish, plus pavilions, pines sprouting wistfully from rockeries, and roving packs of Japanese…
1.2 MILES
Symbolic of concession-era Shanghai, the Bund was the city’s Wall Street, a place of feverish trading and fortunes made and lost. Originally a towpath for…
1.72 MILES
One of Shanghai’s few active Buddhist monasteries, this temple was built between 1918 and 1928. The highlight is a transcendent Buddha crafted from pure…
2 MILES
China’s tallest building dramatically twists skywards from its footing in Lujiazui. The 121-storey, 632m-tall, Gensler-designed Shanghai Tower topped out…
1.58 MILES
Tianzifang and Xintiandi are based on a similar idea – an entertainment complex housed within a warren of lòngtáng (弄堂, alleyways). Unlike Xintiandi,…
0.73 MILES
With its own namesake metro station, Xintiandi has been a Shanghai icon for over a decade. An upmarket entertainment and shopping complex modelled on…
0.31 MILES
This must-see museum escorts you through the craft of millennia and the pages of Chinese history. It's home to one of the most impressive collections in…
1.8 MILES
Shanghai may be known for its glitz and glamour, but it's got an edgy subculture too. The industrial M50 art complex is one prime example, where galleries…
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Originally opened as the Shanghai Race Club in 1934, and having undergone several incarnations since, this iconic building now houses the Shanghai History…
2. Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art
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Nonprofit MOCA Shanghai has an all-glass home to maximise natural sunlight (when it cuts through the clouds), a tip-top location in People’s Park and a…
0.13 MILES
This stupendous tower seizes the Shanghai zeitgeist with dramatic aplomb. Resembling a sci-fi corporation headquarters, the stratospheric building is…
0.13 MILES
Occupying the site of the colonial racetrack (which became a holding camp during WWII), People’s Park is the city centre's green refuge. It's home to the…
0.15 MILES
Designed by Hungarian architect Ladislaus Hudec and erected as a bank in 1934, the Park Hotel was Shanghai’s tallest building until the 1980s, when…
6. Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall
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Set over five levels, this modern museum covers Shanghai's urban planning history, tracing its development from swampy fishing village to modern-day…
0.25 MILES
A fine example of socialist realism sculpture, the Good Eighth Company Mural is in the plaza at People's Square metro exit near the underpass of the West…
0.26 MILES
Designed by notable Hungarian architect Ladislaus Hudec, the Moore Memorial Church (c 1931) is a standout red-brick Christian edifice east of People’s…