Private museums in old aircraft hangars and power stations along the river, and the best ancient bronzes outside Beijing.
Ancient Chinese bronzes, ceramics, painting and calligraphy, in a building shaped like a ding vessel. A second branch, Shanghai Museum East, opened in Pudong in 2024.
The collectors Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei's museum, in Atelier Deshaus's concrete vaults beside a 1950s coal hopper on the river.
China's first state-run contemporary art museum, in a power station turned Expo pavilion; home of the Shanghai Biennale.
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
A private collection of thousands of Chinese posters from 1949 to the 1980s, in an apartment building basement.
A former municipal slaughterhouse built in 1933, with concrete ramps for cattle spiralling around a central drum.
László Hudec's 1924 flatiron apartment building, at the end of a street of plane trees.
A Scandinavian fairy-tale mansion of 1936 with spires and steep roofs, built for a shipping magnate, now a hotel.
The 1920s Columbia Country Club for Americans in Shanghai, restored by OMA as a campus of offices and shops, with its old swimming pool.
Classical gardens and I. M. Pei's Suzhou Museum, 30 minutes by fast train.
Shanghai Museum at opening → lunch in the French Concession → Wukang Mansion → taxi to the West Bund: Long Museum → sunset on the river.