Haw Par Villa

The gardens are closed. Hell is open, most days. Check which.

Go for Hell's Museum, not the gardens, and check the date before you leave home. Most of Haw Par Villa has been closed for maintenance and repairs since 8 December 2025, the day after the operator's ten-year contract ended; the Singapore Tourism Board says the work is about public safety and protecting the park's art, and gives no end date. Hell's Museum, home to the Ten Courts of Hell, is still open on its own ticket, but it closes on Mondays and on a long list of dates through October and November 2026. For curious adults and older children with steady nerves, it is still one of the strangest and most thoughtful museums in the city.

What you'll see

The museum puts the famous hell scenes in a wider context. Before you reach the dioramas of the Ten Courts, you pass a void-deck funeral, a burial crypt, replica altars and a traditional Chinese grave, plus films on how different faiths think about death. It is sometimes moving. The museum advises against bringing children under nine because the punishments are graphic. Free highlight tours run several times a day from the lobby counter; catch one, because the guides explain what the statues don't.

A park that keeps coming back

Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par, the brothers behind Tiger Balm, bought the Pasir Panjang hillside in 1935 and opened the gardens in 1937. Their Art Deco villa was bombed and occupied during the war, then knocked down. In 1988 the park was relaunched as Haw Par Villa Dragon World, with rides added in a revamp of about $30 million; it lost S$31.5 million over ten years. By 2015 visitors were down to about 7,000 a month. The operator Journeys turned that round by leaning into the macabre, opening Hell's Museum in 2021 (it bills itself as the world's first museum on death and the afterlife), and by 2025 the park was drawing 35,000 to 40,000 visitors a month. The current closure is the latest chapter in a park that has been written off more than once.

How to do it well

Check the dated closures on the museum page before you travel, not at the gate. Haw Par Villa MRT on the Circle Line is right outside, which makes it one of the easier trips to the west. Treat it as a focused museum visit rather than a ramble, bring an umbrella, and leave time afterwards for a long drink and a longer conversation. When the gardens reopen, there will be over 1,000 statues and about 150 dioramas across 8.5 hectares to explore again; until then, the museum is the part worth the journey.

Good to know Haw Par Villa MRT (Circle Line) is at the gate. Most of the park is closed for maintenance until further notice. Check Hell's Museum's opening days, dated closures and ticket prices on the official museum page before you travel.

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Haw Par Villa | Pasir Panjang | Nearest MRT: Haw Par Villa