Explore Kuala Lumpur

The Sultan Abdul Samad Building is a brick building with copper domes and a central clock tower facing Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur, built in 1894–1897 for the British colonial government offices. It later housed the country's superior courts; restored in 2026, it now holds galleries, including the Kuala Lumpur City Gallery, and cafés.

Jamek Mosque stands at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers in central Kuala Lumpur. Designed by Arthur Benison Hubback in an Indo-Saracenic style and completed in 1909, it was the city's principal mosque until 1965; its domes, minarets and arcades of red brick and white plaster can be visited outside prayer times.

Independence Square is the open lawn in front of the Sultan Abdul Samad Building in Kuala Lumpur, once the cricket ground of the Selangor Club. Here the Union Flag was lowered and the Malayan flag raised at midnight on 31 August 1957; a 95-metre flagpole stands at its southern end, and the square hosts the annual Independence Day parade.

Central Market is a market hall for Malaysian handicrafts, art and souvenirs on Jalan Hang Kasturi in central Kuala Lumpur, beside the Klang River. Founded in 1888 as a wet market, it has occupied its Art Deco building since 1937; saved from demolition, the hall reopened in 1986 as a centre for crafts and culture, also called Pasar Seni.

Sri Mahamariamman Temple is the oldest Hindu temple in Kuala Lumpur, founded in 1873 by K. Thamboosamy Pillai and on its present site on Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, at the edge of Chinatown, since 1885. The current building dates from 1968; its five-tier gopuram gate tower, 22.9 m high and completed in 1972, carries 228 sculpted figures of Hindu deities.

The National Mosque of Malaysia, completed in 1965, stands in about five hectares of gardens near the old railway station of Kuala Lumpur. Its folded concrete roof forms a 16-pointed star shaped like an open umbrella beside a 73-metre minaret, with room for 15,000 worshippers; visitors are admitted outside prayer times with a dress code.

Perdana Botanical Gardens, formerly the Lake Gardens, is a 92-hectare park in central Kuala Lumpur laid out from 1888 by the colonial treasurer Alfred Venning around a lake. It contains themed gardens for orchids and hibiscus and a deer park, and the Kuala Lumpur Bird Park and Butterfly Park lie within its grounds.

The National Monument is a 15-metre bronze sculpture group by Felix de Weldon near Parliament House in Kuala Lumpur, opened in 1966. It commemorates those who died fighting the Japanese occupation in the Second World War and during the Malayan Emergency, and stands beyond a pool with fountains and bronze water lilies.

KLCC Park is a 20-hectare urban park at the foot of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, designed by the Brazilian landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. Paths, a lake with fountains, a jogging track, a children's playground and a wading pool lie among trees, some of them transplanted from the racecourse that once occupied the site.

Thean Hou Temple is a six-tiered Chinese temple dedicated to the sea goddess Mazu, on Robson Heights in Kuala Lumpur. Built by the city's Hainanese community from 1981 and opened in 1989, it is run by the Selangor and Federal Territory Hainan Association; its red pillars and tiled roofs look out over the city.

Istana Negara is the official residence of the King of Malaysia, the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Halim in north-western Kuala Lumpur. Opened in 2011, the palace complex covers about 98 hectares and has 22 domes; it is not open to the public, and visitors see it from outside the main gate.

The Batu Caves are limestone caves in a hill in Gombak, Selangor, about 13 km north of Kuala Lumpur, used as a Hindu shrine since a temple to Murugan was completed there in 1891. A flight of 272 painted steps leads up to the Temple Cave beside a 42.7-metre gilded statue of Murugan unveiled in 2006, and the site is the centre of the yearly Thaipusam festival.