Explore Malacca

A Famosa was a Portuguese fortress built in Malacca around 1512, later enlarged by the Dutch and largely demolished by the British in 1811. What survives is the Porta de Santiago, a weathered gateway of laterite blocks at the foot of St. Paul's Hill, with old cannons set out in front of it.

The Malacca Sultanate Palace Museum is a wooden reconstruction of the 15th-century palace of Sultan Mansur Shah at the foot of St. Paul's Hill in Malacca City, built in 1984–1986 from descriptions in the Malay Annals without nails. Its three floors show a throne-room diorama, royal chambers, costumes, weapons and regalia of the sultanate.

St. Paul's Church is the roofless ruin of a church on the summit of St. Paul's Hill in Malacca, begun by the Portuguese as a chapel in 1521 and later used by the Dutch until Christ Church replaced it. Portuguese and Dutch tombstones stand along the walls inside, and a small white lighthouse tower stands at its front.

The Stadthuys is the red former town hall on Dutch Square in Malacca, built by the Dutch around 1650 as the office of the governor and his deputy and later used by the British administration. With the neighbouring clock tower and Christ Church it forms the Red Square, and it now houses the History and Ethnography Museum.

Christ Church is an Anglican church on Dutch Square in Malacca, built by the Dutch between 1741 and 1753 to mark a century since they took the city from the Portuguese. Originally Dutch Reformed, it is the oldest functioning Protestant church in Malaysia, and its red-painted façade stands beside the Stadthuys.

The Maritime Museum in Malacca City is housed in a 36-metre replica of the Portuguese ship Flor de la Mar, which sank off Sumatra in 1511, near the mouth of the Malacca River. Opened in 1994, it covers the port's trade from the sultanate to the Portuguese, Dutch, British and Japanese periods with maps, paintings, ship models and artefacts.

The Church of St. Francis Xavier is a Catholic church in Malacca, begun in 1849 by the French priest Father Farvé on the site of a Portuguese church of St Dominic and completed in 1856. Its twin-towered Gothic Revival façade has a rose window, and it is named after the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier, who worked in Malacca in the 16th century.

The Baba Nyonya Heritage Museum occupies a townhouse built in 1896 on Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock in Malacca City, opened in 1986 by Chan Kim Lay, the fourth generation of his family to live there. Its rooms show the domestic life of the Peranakan Chinese, with carved woodwork, furniture and porcelain.

Kampung Kling Mosque on Jalan Tukang Emas in Malacca City was founded by Indian Muslim traders in 1748 as a wooden building and rebuilt in brick in 1872. It mixes Sumatran, Chinese, Hindu and Malay forms, with a tiered roof, a pagoda-like minaret and glazed tiles, and stands near the Cheng Hoon Teng and Sri Poyatha Moorthi temples.

Jonker Street, officially Jalan Hang Jebat, is the main street of Malacca's old Chinese quarter, starting across the Malacca River from the Stadthuys. Its shophouses, some dating back to the 17th century, hold antique dealers, textile and craft shops and eateries, and at weekends the street closes to traffic for an evening night market.

Cheng Hoon Teng is a Chinese temple on Jalan Tokong in Malacca, founded in the 1600s by the Kapitan Tay Kie Ki and used for Buddhist, Taoist and Confucian worship. Its halls, rebuilt in 1801, have carved timberwork and roof ridges decorated with figures, and their restoration received a UNESCO Asia-Pacific heritage award in 2002.

The Malacca Straits Mosque stands on stilts at the edge of Pulau Melaka, an artificial island in Malacca, and was opened in 2006. Its gold dome, stained-glass archway and 30-metre minaret, which also serves as a lighthouse, face the Strait of Malacca. Visitors are asked to dress modestly and to avoid prayer times.

St. Peter's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Malacca City, built in 1710 for the Portuguese Eurasian community on land given by a Dutch convert, after decades in which the Dutch had suppressed Catholic worship. Its whitewashed facade with curved gables stands beside a bell tower marked with the year 1710.

Encore Melaka is a theatre on the waterfront of Malacca's Impression City development, designed by the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design. Its auditorium seats more than 2,000 people on a platform that rotates 360 degrees between stages about 240 metres long in total, for the staged show The Legacy of a Generation, which uses projection mapping.

Malaysia Heritage Studios is a cultural park in Ayer Keroh, north-east of Malacca city, on the site of the Mini Malaysia and ASEAN Cultural Park opened in 1986. Reopened under its new name in 2022, it shows traditional houses from the 13 Malaysian states as galleries, a maze of characters from Malay folklore, Borneo masks and cultural performances.