The Shanghai Astronomy Museum opened in 2021 in Lingang, a new city built on reclaimed land at the mouth of the Yangtze, about seventy kilometres south-east of the city centre. It is the largest museum in the world dedicated to astronomy, and its building is designed around the geometry of the solar system: three circular forms, a domed planetarium, an inverted dome and a sphere, with the paths between them giving the visitor the sense of following orbital arcs rather than walking a corridor. The main structure has almost no straight lines.
What is inside
The displays run from the history of observation - astrolabes, armillary spheres, Chinese and European instruments, and the record of Chinese astronomy from the imperial observatories onwards - through to cosmology, the formation of stars and planets, the search for exoplanets and the physics of black holes. There are large-scale models, immersive projection environments, a meteorite collection and a solar telescope. The planetarium dome runs several shows a day. Much of the signage is bilingual and the interactive exhibits work in English as well as Chinese, which is not always the case in Chinese science museums.
Lingang around it
The museum sits beside Dishui Lake, a large circular artificial lake at the centre of the new city, with a landscaped ring of parkland, a pedestrian promenade and a cluster of cultural buildings around the shore. The area is quiet, planned and otherworldly - a completely new urban district built from nothing in the last twenty years - and the contrast with the dense old city is part of the interest. There is also a marine park and an aquarium nearby, and the whole district is designed for walking and cycling along the water.
Practical notes
Tickets must be reserved in advance through the museum's official channel and sell out days ahead, especially at weekends and in school holidays; the museum is closed on Mondays. The journey from central Shanghai takes about an hour and a half by subway and bus, or around an hour by car, so plan a full day rather than an afternoon. Allow three hours for the museum and another hour for the lake. Weekday tickets are much easier to obtain, and a weekday visit also leaves the galleries far less crowded.
