Pudong: Lujiazui & the Century Avenue Museums

Jean Nouvel's white-marble box on the Pudong riverbank, opened 2021 — Shanghai's blockbuster-exhibition venue (Tate, Picasso, the Pompidou-scale shows) with a fourth-floor terrace that looks straight across at the Bund. Open every day till 21:00, no reservation any more, tickets sold by date; foreigners get their own purchase button on the official site.

The flagship new home of one of China's best museums: bronzes, ceramics, calligraphy and jades in brand-new galleries, and it's free. Not in Lujiazui proper — it sits by Century Park, a short Line 2 ride east — but it's the strongest indoor half-day in Pudong.

China's tallest building. The 118th-floor observatory is the highest of Lujiazui's three decks and the one worth paying for: a 55-second elevator to a 360° view where the Oriental Pearl and Jinmao sit below you.

The Pudong-side river promenade from the Museum of Art Pudong past the ferry pier — the place to see the whole Bund facade lit up in one sweep, with the skyscrapers at your back. Free, open, and quieter than the Bund itself. For when the lights go on, see the skyline lighting guide.

A five-minute ride in a glass capsule through a tunnel under the Huangpu, from the Bund promenade to the foot of the Oriental Pearl, with strobe lights, inflatable figures and a voice-over about 'the abyss'. It is the most searched 'is this a scam' attraction in Shanghai, and the short answer is: it is a 50-yuan river crossing dressed as a ride. You cross the river anyway — here are the three better ways.

The 1999 pagoda-skyscraper's 88th-floor deck at 340 m — the lowest of the three Lujiazui towers and the most beautiful inside: the deck rings a 30-storey hotel atrium that drops away beneath you. A separate 'Skywalk' ticket puts you on an open ledge outside the 88th floor with a harness. Open daily; two official sources give slightly different hours, and the adult price has been listed at both 120 and 88 yuan within a year.

A 117.5-metre-diameter ring of walkway lifted above the Lujiazui traffic circle, linking the Oriental Pearl, the aquarium, the malls and the metro exits. Free, always open, and the one place at ground level where you can turn slowly through 360 degrees of skyscraper without a car in the frame.

The 1994 pink-sphere TV tower that started the Pudong skyline. More retro icon than best view — its glass-floor sphere and the space-age silhouette are the draw; queues are the price.

A 2022 public library built like a floating carved stone — seven floors of reading rooms, terraces and exhibitions in Century Park's culture cluster, sharing a metro station with the Shanghai Museum East. Free, no ticket, no reservation, and open till 20:30 on the lower floors; the top-floor rare-book gallery closes at 17:00. The best free interior in Pudong.

The 'bottle opener' of 2008. Its famous three-level observatory on floors 94, 97 and 100 — the 100th-floor glass corridor at 474 m — is no longer a public observation deck: the owner's website lists floors 94-100 only as 'Sky Arena', an event venue for launches, galas and exhibitions, and the owner's website has no ticketing or visitor section. It gave up its 4A tourist-attraction rating in 2024 citing a 'functional adjustment'. You can go up only when a ticketed exhibition is running there (a FIFA show at 99 yuan ran through August 2026). Shanghai now has three everyday observation decks, not four.