Museum · Civic District
National Gallery Singapore
The largest public collection of modern Southeast Asian art, in the former Supreme Court and City Hall.
Look for: Raden Saleh's Forest Fire (1849), animals fleeing over a cliff.
Daily
Go further, look closer.
Cities · Asia · 1°17′N 103°51′E
Singapore
The best place to see Southeast Asian art as a whole, and a city that has turned its colonial buildings into museums.
Best monthsJanuary (Singapore Art Week)
Art calendarSingapore Art Week (January) · Singapore Biennale
This guide4 essentials · 4 places off-piste
Essentials
Museum · Empress Place
Asian Civilisations Museum
The cultures of Asia told through trade, on the riverbank, with the cargo of a 9th-century Arab ship that sank off Indonesia with 60,000 Chinese ceramics.
Look for: The Tang Shipwreck bowls, still stacked as they were packed.
Daily
Museum · Tanjong Pagar Distripark
Singapore Art Museum
The contemporary art museum, now in a port warehouse at Tanjong Pagar while its old mission-school building is renovated.
Look for: The cranes of the container port through the windows.
Daily
Galleries · Alexandra
Gillman Barracks
Contemporary galleries in a 1930s British army barracks, on a hill surrounded by forest.
Look for: The walk between the buildings.
Free · closed Mondays
Off the list
Off-Piste in Singapore
Rooms, ruins and curiosities: the city's other museum.
Sculpture park · Pasir Panjang
Haw Par Villa
The Tiger Balm brothers' 1937 park of more than 1,000 Chinese mythological statues and dioramas, including the Ten Courts of Hell.
The Ten Courts of Hell.
Architecture · Joo Chiat
Koon Seng Road shophouses
A row of 1920s Peranakan terrace houses with pastel façades, carved swing doors and glazed tiles.
The tiles at the doorsteps.
Temple · Telok Ayer
Thian Hock Keng Temple
A Hokkien temple of 1842, once on the waterfront, where sailors gave thanks after arriving from China. Built without nails.
The dragons on the roof ridges.
Village · Hougang
Kampong Lorong Buangkok
The last kampong village on mainland Singapore: wooden houses with zinc roofs, between tower blocks.
Walk through quietly; people live there.
Nearby
Johor Bahru
Across the causeway, the old town's temples and street art.
If you have one day
National Gallery Singapore at opening → walk across the river to the Asian Civilisations Museum → lunch → Gillman Barracks → Haw Par Villa at the end of the day.