Shanghai History Museum

Two bronze lions that once adorned the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation building on the Bund are among the exhibits of the Shanghai History Museum (上海市历史博物馆), also known as the Shanghai Revolution History Museum. Its home is the neo-classical Shanghai Race Club building of 1934, whose imposing ten-storey tower was long a landmark of central Shanghai.

The collections concentrate on roughly a century of the city's past, from the opening of the port in 1843 to the communist take-over in 1949. The objects on display include a cannon used in the first Opium War and a sedan chair, and other exhibits trace the history of art, culture and industrialization in Shanghai. The oldest relics date back some 6,000 years.

Founded in 1983, the museum suits visitors who want to understand how Shanghai developed in the hundred years between the opening of its port and 1949.