Curated Itinerary
Shanghai Art Deco: a walk from the Bund to People’s Square
See Shanghai’s iconic Art Deco landmarks, from the Peace Hotel and Customs House on the Bund to the Rockbund Art Museum and former Park Hotel, within a walkable area.
Take this route into Google Maps
From Fairmont Peace Hotel to Former Park Hotel Shanghai, in the order we curated them.
➤ Turn on the navigator in Google MapsIt opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
The walk covers 6.2 km in around 175 minutes, linking four Art Deco landmarks between the Bund and People’s Square. It begins at the Fairmont Peace Hotel on Nanjing Road East, passes the Shanghai Customs House and the Rockbund Art Museum on Huqiu Road, and ends at the former Park Hotel on Nanjing Road West, facing People’s Park.
Start at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, whose green copper pyramid has marked the northern Bund since 1929. A short walk south leads to the Shanghai Customs House, with its Doric colonnade and clock tower completed in 1927. From there, the route turns inland to the Rockbund Art Museum, a 1933 building that now shows contemporary exhibitions.
The final stop is the former Park Hotel, designed by László Hudec and opened in 1934. At 83.8 metres it was then the tallest building in Asia, and its stepped profile closes the itinerary at the edge of People’s Park. The walk works well in spring or autumn, when temperatures are moderate and the streets are less crowded.
Read the article
The magazine has a longer piece on this walk: Shanghai Art Deco from the Bund to People’s Square.
Step by step
Fairmont Peace Hotel
Rising above the Bund with its unmistakable green pyramidal copper roof, the Fairmont Peace Hotel opened in 1929 as the Cathay Hotel and is the defining…
Shanghai Customs House
The Shanghai Customs House at number 13 on the Bund is one of the most storied buildings in East Asia, its clock tower — known affectionately as Big Ching…
Rockbund Art Museum
Contemporary art museum in Shanghai's historic Bund district, occupying a 1933 building that once housed the Royal Asiatic Society.
Former Park Hotel Shanghai
For nearly three decades after its completion in December 1934, the Park Hotel — formally the International Hotel (国际饭店) — stood as the tallest building in…
Download for tour navigation
PDF is the stop list with GPS, to print or keep on the phone. GPX for Garmin / Komoot / OsmAnd. KML for Google Earth and Maps.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
To keep the route in the app instead of opening it once, download the KML above and import it into Google My Maps — Create a new map, then Import: the route then sits among your own maps in Google Maps, with the stops and our notes attached to each one.