Asian Civilisations Museum

Made in China, styled for the Gulf, sunk in Indonesia, shown in Singapore. That's the first room.

If you only do one of the big riverside museums, make it this one, and give the first room most of your time. The Tang Shipwreck gallery explains the whole building in a single shelf of bowls, and everything upstairs reads better once you have seen it. The catch is scale: three floors of maritime trade, faith and design is too much for one visit, so pick a thread and leave the rest for next time. Singapore citizens and PRs get in free, which makes the second visit an easy sell.

Start with the ship

Found by chance in 1998 off Belitung Island, roughly 600km south-east of Singapore, it was an 18-metre sewn-timber vessel of the Persian Gulf type, bound in the ninth century for what is now Iran and Iraq. Its cargo of more than 60,000 Tang-dynasty ceramics, plus gold and silver, sits in the Khoo Teck Puat Gallery at the start of the ground-floor section on trade. Over 50,000 of those pieces are hand-painted bowls from Changsha in Hunan, decorated with fish, flowers, birds and mountains: mass-produced in China for buyers thousands of kilometres away, which makes them feel oddly modern. Look for the gold octagonal cup from Yangzhou, about 9cm tall, from around the 830s and decorated with Central Asian musicians and a dancer (the museum calls it the largest known cup of its type), and for the blue-and-white dishes whose cobalt may have come from Iran. Made in China, styled for the Gulf, sunk in Indonesia, shown in Singapore.

Then pick one thread

The permanent displays are grouped around maritime trade, faith and belief, and materials and design. Trade follows straight on from the shipwreck. Faith and belief is where the heavyweights are: a Chola bronze of the goddess Uma, a rare sandstone Buddha from Mathura, the head of a Gandharan bodhisattva. Materials and design brings Chinese export porcelain, Peranakan gold and theatre masks. Choose one object and ask who made it, who carried it and who it was for; that question does more work than any wall label. The Kwek Hong Png Wing, added in the revamp of 2015 and 2016, is the contemporary art space if you want a change of pace.

How to do it well

Go on a Friday, when it stays open late and the river is lit up by the time you leave. Pack a pencil rather than a pen, keep the water bottle in your bag and leave a big backpack in the lobby lockers. Photography without flash is fine. Borrow a free folding stool from Visitor Services (a small mercy for anyone planning to sit with a Buddha for a while). Lifts reach every gallery, manual wheelchairs can be borrowed, and a virtual host called Allie has maps and self-guided routes on your phone.

Afterwards, walk out to the Empress Place waterfront and watch the bumboats go by: the same trade route the museum spends three floors explaining. National Gallery is a short stroll away, but one museum done properly beats two at a jog.

Good to know 1 Empress Place, a five-minute walk from Raffles Place MRT Exit H. Open 10am–7pm daily, until 9pm on Fridays; gallery admission ends 30 minutes before closing. Check ticket prices and book on the official site. Public holidays: the museum lists its hours as daily, 10am–7pm and to 9pm on Fridays, with no public-holiday exception.

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Asian Civilisations Museum | 1 Empress Place, Singapore 179555 | Nearest MRT: City Hall