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Shanghai Botanical Gardens
The Botanical Gardens offer an escape from Shanghai's synthetic cityscape. The Tropicarium gives you the chance to get close to tropical flora; take the lift to the 6th floor for an impressive view of the gardens. Some of the flower arrangements are a little twee, but the place is well-maintained and busy. On weekends, it's a popular place for couples to take wedding photos.
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Shanghai Exhibition Centre
The hulking great monolith of the Shanghai Exhibition Centre can be seen from West Nanjing Rd. It was built as the Palace of Sino-Soviet Friendship, a friendship that soon turned to ideological rivalry and even the brink of war in the 1960s. Architectural buffs will appreciate its monumentality and unsubtle, bold Bolshevik strokes - there was a time when Pǔdōng was set to look like this.
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Shanghai Gallery Of Art
Shanghai's handiest (and perhaps trendiest) art gallery finds itself sandwiched between two floors at Three on the Bund, which introduces you to Shanghai's effortless marriage of contemporary art and haute couture . For glimpses of high-brow and conceptual Chinese art, sample this gallery's rarefied atmosphere and manifestly exclusive inclinations.
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Shanghai History Museum
Both kids and adults will enjoy this sophisticated and informative museum with a fun presentation on old Shanghai. The city's notorious transport domain is the first for examination, and you can size up an antique bus, an old wheelbarrow taxi and an ornate sedan chair. Upstairs, learn how the city prospered on the back of the cotton trade and junk transportation, when it was known as 'Little Sùzhōu'.
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Shanghai Museum
Rocked slightly from its jealously guarded throne by the 2006 unveiling of Běijīng's tip-top Capital Museum, the monarch of China's museum world remains one of Shanghai's highlight sensations. Expect to spend half, if not most of, a day here. A primer of Chinese civilisation recounted via 120,000 exhibits, the intelligently designed museum guides you through the pages of Chinese history.
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Shanghai Museum Of Contemporary Art (Moca Shanghai)
A recent opening that has grabbed the bull by the horns on steering the world contemporary art scene to Shanghai, this non-profit museum collection has an all-glass construction to maximise natural sunlight (when it cuts through the constant clouds), a tip-top location in Renmin Park and a fresh, invigorating approach to exhibiting contemporary international art works.
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Shanghai Museum of Folk Collectibles
Housed in the magnificent Sanshan Guildhall, built in 1909, this fascinating museum allows an exploration of Shanghai via the medium of collectibles, from cigarette lighters to ceramics and cruelly exquisite-looking miniature shoes for bound feet. Take time to enjoy the guildhall's contours and traditional layout.
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Shanghai Museum Of Natural History
Located in the former Cotton Exchange Building (built in 1923), the exhibits at this dusty and gloomy museum are based on the former collection of the British Royal Asiatic Society. The most intriguing exhibits are the Ming dynasty mummies excavated from Dapuqiao and Xietu Rds. A traipse through the museum turns up numerous original features, including its tiled floor, cornices, ironwork and the occasional glint of stained glass.
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Shanghai Museum of Public Security
It may sound turgid and dull, but this museum has some gems among the inevitable displays on traffic control and post-Liberation security milestones. The gold pistols of Sun Yatsen and 1930s gangster Huang Jinrong are worth hunting down amid the fine collection of Al Capone-style machine- and pen-guns, and look out for the collection of hand-painted business cards once dispensed by the city's top jìnǔ (prostitutes).
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Shanghai Ocean Aquarium
Education meets entertainment in this slick and intelligently designed aquarium that children will love. Join them on a tour through the aquatic environments from the Yangzi River to Australia, South America, the frigid ecosystems of the Antarctic and to the flourishing marine life of coral reefs. The 155m-long underwater clear viewing tunnel has gobsmacking views.
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Shanghai Science & Technology Museum
This impressive space-age building aims at providing a fun educational experience but ultimately disappoints. Kids will like the Light of Wisdom hall, with its hands-on science experiments, but in general non-Chinese speakers will find the lack of instructions and English text frustrating. Surprisingly there is nothing on Chinese science and technology (this is, after all, the land that brought us fireworks and the rudder).
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Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall
Urban Planning Exhibition Halls - where the creaking cities of yore are triumphantly redesigned by developers into fabulous metropolitan visions - are all the rage in New China (Běijīng has one). It's pitched as a tourist attraction, but this is really just a massively optimistic self-appraisal. Most Western visitors are in town to see how the city used to be rather than how it may be.
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Shanghai Zendai Museum Of Modern Art (Shanghai Moma)
This newish, small-scale museum delivers an invigorating shot to the arm to Shanghai's ever-flexing art scene. The emphasis is on contemporary exhibitions in a highly modern art space; the effect is a sophisticated and cool haven for fashionable aesthetes. Tours (in Chinese), lectures, concerts and other activities are part of the overall production. Check their website for details on current and forthcoming exhibitions.
Read more about Shanghai Zendai Museum Of Modern Art (Shanghai Moma)
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Shanghai Zoo
As Chinese zoos go, this is just about the best and it makes for a good day out for those with kids in tow. There's a decent selection of beasts - from woolly twin-humped Bactrian camels to spindly legged giraffe, gorillas, lions, lots of different monkeys, giant pandas and polar bears - but some of the enclosures they're housed in are less than ideal.
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Shikumen Open House Museum
Arranged over two floors and entered via Xingye Rd in Xīntiāndì, this fascinating exhibition invites you into a typical shíkùmén household, decked out with period furniture.
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Site of the 1st National Congress of the CCP
On 23 July 1921 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in this French Concession building (then 106 Rue Wantz), at one fell swoop converting this unassuming shíkùmén block into one of Chinese communism's holiest shrines.
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Song Qingling Mausoleum
Despite its hard-edged communist layout, this green and well-tended park is excellent for a stroll and for escaping the relentless Hóngqiáo skyline. Song Qingling herself is interred in a low-key tomb here, but she is memorialised in the Song Qingling Exhibition Hall straight ahead from the main entrance, which itself looks like a Chinese Imperial tomb.
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Song Qingling's Former Residence
Built in the 1920s by a Greek shipping magnate, this building became home to the wife of Dr Sun Yatsen from 1948 to 1963. Size up two of her black limousines (one a gift from Stalin) in the garage and pad about the house, eyeing its period furnishings.
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St Ignatius Cathedral
South west of the Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-Wei, the dignified twin-spired St Ignatius Cathedral (1904) is a major Xújiāhuì landmark, its ecclesiastical form reflected in much of the local architecture. The cruciform-shaped church is a twin-spired, red brick church with two belfries and a statue of Christ above the door, flanked by the four apostles.
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St Nicholas Church
A short walk west along Gaolan Rd from Fuxing Park is rewarded by the distinctive shape of the vacant and now derelict St Nicholas Church, one of Shanghai's small band of Russian Orthodox houses of worship, built to service the huge influx of Russians who arrived in Shanghai in the 1930s.
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Sun Yatsen's Former Residence
China is awash with Sun Yatsen (Sun Zhongshan) memorabilia and this is one of several former dwellings nationwide. Sun lived here on Rue Molière for six years from 1918 to 1924, supported by overseas Chinese funds. The entry price gets you a brief tour of the house in English.
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Taikang Rd Art Centre
This warren of shíkùmén architecture offers tranquil doses of genuine charm. A community of art galleries, studios, pocket-sized wi-fi cafés, petite shops and boutiques - the perfect antidote to Shanghai's oversized malls and intimidating skyscrapers. With families still residing in neighbouring buildings, a community mood survives, while the area's relative transport isolation has prevented it from being swamped by feral tour groups.
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Temple of the Town Gods
Chinese towns traditionally came with a Taoist Temple of the Town Gods, but many fell victim to periodic upheaval. Originally dating to the early 15th century, this particular temple was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution and later restored.
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Tomorrow Square
This stupendous tower - designed by John Portman & Associates and completed in October 2003 - seizes the Shanghai zeitgeist with dramatic aplomb. Resembling a sci-fi corporation headquarters, pop up to the lobby of the JW Marriott Tomorrow Square on the 38th floor to put Renmin Sq in proper perspective.
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Unique Hill Gallery
You'd never guess there was a gallery hidden in this anonymous apartment block east of Shanghai Stadium. The changing exhibits are strong on Old Shanghai memorabilia, such as cigarette posters and period photos. Some items are for sale. Check listings magazines or call (they speak English) to see what's on before heading out here.
