Jing'an & West Nanjing Road
Shanghai's upscale central corridor: Jing'an Temple, the Zhangyuan shikumen quarter and the Natural History Museum, strung along Metro Line 2.
A good base: dense hotels, malls and restaurants along West Nanjing Road, with the golden temple and restored shikumen lanes as anchor sights.
Sight density is lower than the Bund area — this is more a stay-eat-shop district than a checklist district, and prices around the Jing'an Temple business circle run high.
Places here
2 Jing'an Temple
Must-seeTempleThe gold-roofed Buddhist temple sitting surreally among the malls and towers of West Nanjing Road — Shanghai's most photographed sacred-meets-skyscraper contrast. An active temple with a silver Buddha hall, best treated as a 45-minute stop.
5 Shanghai Natural History Museum
Must-seeMuseumA striking nautilus-shaped building sunk into Jing'an Sculpture Park, packed with dinosaurs, dioramas and an excellent African savanna hall. The city's best rainy-day and kids option in the central districts.
7 Zhangyuan
Must-seeAreaA restored block of shikumen (stone-gate) lane houses off West Nanjing Road, reopened as a pedestrian quarter of flagship boutiques and cafés. The architecture is the draw: this is the easiest place near the metro to walk Shanghai's signature lane-house streetscape.
1 Changde Apartments (Eileen Chang's Home)
LandmarkThe 1936 art-deco apartment block where Eileen Chang wrote most of her famous fiction in the 1940s — still a private residential building with about thirty households, and not open inside. What you get is the facade, the plaque, and the ground-floor bookshop-café that trades on her name, open daily till 22:00.
3 Jing'an Villa
AreaShanghai's largest 'new-style' lilong — rows of red-brick terraced houses dating from 1932 between West Nanjing Road and Weihai Road, still lived in by a few thousand people. It is the unrestored counterpart to Zhangyuan two blocks away: same housing type, no boutiques, laundry on the lines. You are walking through people's front yards, and the lane gates are theirs to close.
4 Moller Villa
LandmarkThe 'fairy-tale castle' of Shanghai: a 1936 Scandinavian-gothic villa with pointed turrets, built for shipping magnate Eric Moller and now a 53-room heritage hotel. It is not a sight you can visit — the gate sign says so — but the turrets are fully visible over the wall from Shaanxi South Road, and a meal or afternoon tea buys you the garden.
6 Starbucks Reserve Roastery Shanghai
ShoppingYes, it is a Starbucks. It is also the rare place on this list that is free to enter, needs no reservation, has English on every sign and can take a foreign card at the till — a two-storey roastery under a copper cask on West Nanjing Road. For a rainy hour or a first-day landing spot with working toilets and Wi-Fi, that is worth knowing.