Shanghai Urban History Exhibition Hall

Shanghai Urban History Exhibition Hall

The Shanghai Urban History Exhibition Hall is located within the Oriental Pearl Radio & Television Tower. It is an illustrative exhibition reflecting the modern historical changes of Shanghai, covering a display area of 10,000 square meters.

The entire exhibition hall is composed of seven parts: "Tracing Huating’s Origins," "Scenes of the Old Town," "Glimpses of the Treaty Port Era," "The International Settlement," "Maritime Traces," "Architecture Expo," and "Horses and Carriages Through the Ages."

It is a regional museum in China, specializing in collecting cultural relics and specimens from Shanghai, and conducting research and exhibitions on the local natural environment, resources, social history development, and construction achievements. The Shanghai History Museum is a comprehensive regional museum that reflects the local history of Shanghai. The preparatory work for Shanghai's regional museums began in the 1950s with the Shanghai History and Construction Museum. In 1983, the "Shanghai Historical Relics Exhibition Hall" was established, and in July 1991, it was renamed to its current title.

In 1983, the Shanghai Historical Relics Exhibition Hall temporarily borrowed the fifth hall of the Shanghai Agricultural Exhibition Hall in the western suburbs as its provisional venue, which has now been opened to the public. The exhibition hall comprehensively showcases the long historical panorama of Shanghai from ancient times to the liberation of Shanghai in 1949, through more than 1,300 cultural relics, documents, photographs, and other materials.

In October 1991, the Shanghai History Museum reopened at 1286 Hongqiao Road with a completely new venue. Its permanent exhibition, titled "The Historical Development of Modern Shanghai," displayed over 1,500 cultural relics, divided into six sections. It fully presented the hundred-year history of Shanghai from its establishment as a treaty port in 1843 to its liberation in 1949. The content covered the opening and demise of the foreign concessions in Shanghai, the gradual improvement of the urban landscape, the rapid economic rise, the flourishing culture, the unique folk customs of the immigrant society, and the political events of the century. This exhibition was rated as one of the first "Top Ten Exhibition Masterpieces" in the national cultural relics and museums system by the National Cultural Heritage Administration, but it closed in March 1999 due to the expiration of the lease.

In May 2001, the "Shanghai Urban History Exhibition Hall," prepared by the Shanghai History Museum, opened to the public in the podium of the Oriental Pearl Radio & Television Tower. The exhibition hall is divided into five sections: "Tracing Huating’s Origins," "Scenes of the Old Town," "Glimpses of the Treaty Port Era," "The International Settlement," and "Old Traces of Shanghai." It mainly uses artistic methods such as scenes and models, supplemented by audio, multimedia information inquiry devices, and multimedia film-model synthesis devices. With urban architectural development as the main thread, it reflects the process of Shanghai’s transformation from a coastal fishing village into China’s largest industrial and commercial metropolis from ancient times to the present, highlighting the historical evolution of Shanghai in politics, economy, culture, society, and daily life in the modern era.

In January 2003, the Shanghai History Museum was designated as a "Shanghai Patriotic Education Base" by the Shanghai Municipal People's Government. In recent years, the Shanghai History Museum has organized numerous temporary and traveling exhibitions, such as "Sun Yat-sen and Shanghai – Cultural Relics, Documents, and Archives Exhibition," "Modern Metropolis – Social Scenes of Shanghai and Hong Kong," and "East Meets West – European Porcelain Exhibition," achieving excellent social responses and benefits. While promoting various exhibitions to the public, the Shanghai History Museum has also held multiple public lecture series titled "Famous Experts Talk About Shanghai," disseminating knowledge about Shanghai’s local history and cultural relics museums, attaining favorable social effects.

The Shanghai History Museum houses a total collection of approximately 110,000 items, categorized into fifteen major types: paintings and calligraphy, metals, ceramics, crafts, badges, documents, printing materials, textiles, stone carvings, coins, photographs, paper-cuttings, stamps, records, and other miscellaneous items. Among them are important cultural relics such as the Ming Dynasty Han Ximeng Gu Embroidery album of flowers, insects, and fish, the calligraphy scroll of Hou Dongzeng in running script, the golden-script sutras stored at Qibao Temple, the bronze cannon "Zhenyuan General" from the modern anti-British resistance of Chen Huacheng, large Taiping Rebellion coins, the original pair of bronze lions in front of the HSBC Bank, and the boundary stones of the British-American International Settlement and the French Concession from 1893.

The Shanghai History Museum has long been committed to academic research and investigation in areas such as Shanghai’s local cultural relics and history, folklore, humanistic environment, urban changes, and museology, publishing a large number of works. Since 2002, it has published the "Shanghai History Museum Journal." In 2007, the Shanghai History Museum became the chair unit of the Urban Museums Committee under the Chinese Museums Association. As a key member of the International Council of Museums’ Urban Museums Professional Committee, the Shanghai History Museum actively collaborates with urban museums both domestically and internationally, contributing to the advancement of urban museums.

The new construction project of the Shanghai History Museum has been included in the Shanghai Five-Year Plan for 2011–2015 as a "major cultural project during the 12th Five-Year Plan period." The future new history museum will be a regional museum that fully reflects the trajectory of Shanghai’s historical development, positioned to comprehensively showcase cultural relics from Shanghai’s ancient and modern history. A new museum that comprehensively displays the historical relics of ancient and modern Shanghai is expected to make its debut in the city.

Address: Ground Floor, Oriental Pearl Radio & Television Tower, No. 1 Century Avenue, Pudong New Area, Shanghai

Type: Museum

Recommended visiting time: 1 hour

Phone: 021-58791888

Opening hours:

8:00-21:30

Ticket

Ticket: 36 RMB