Mid-range · 6-hour walk · Shanghai
The French Concession in six hours
Plane-tree streets, the shikumen lanes, the propaganda poster basement and the power station turned gallery.
The three-hour route does the Bund and Yu Garden. The former French Concession is the Shanghai people mean when they say the city is beautiful: a grid of plane-tree avenues and 1920s villas, with shikumen lane houses behind them. Add a basement museum of propaganda posters that is hard to find and worth it, and a decommissioned power station on the river that is now China's biggest contemporary art museum.
The route, stop by stop
-
Tianzifang
A block of shikumen lanes turned into galleries, bars and shops. Cramped and touristy, and still the clearest look at how these houses worked.
55 min here Walk here → -
Fuxing Park
Laid out by the French in 1909 in formal style, and now full of ballroom dancing, mahjong and choirs from early morning.
40 min here Walk here → -
Wukang Road
Arrive by metro from the previous stop
The concession at its best — plane trees, 1920s villas and the prow-shaped Wukang Mansion at the junction, which is the most photographed building in the city.
45 min here Walk here → -
Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Centre
In the basement of an ordinary apartment block, with a guard who hands you a map to find it. Several thousand posters from 1949 to 1979.
50 min here Walk here → -
Power Station of Art
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
A 2010 Expo pavilion in a converted power station on the Huangpu, with the 165-metre chimney kept. China's first state-run contemporary art museum and free.
70 min here Walk here → -
Xintiandi
Arrive by taxi from the previous stop
Shikumen rebuilt as an upmarket quarter in 2001, which purists dislike. The site of the first Communist Party congress in 1921 is on the edge of it.
40 min here Walk here →
More in Shanghai
Every walking route in Shanghai, or the full Shanghai guide for where to stay and what a day costs.