Bank of China Building
LandmarkThe Bund & East Nanjing Road
BANK OF CHINA BUILDING · ZHONGGUO YINHANG DALOU
Free
The only Bund tower with Chinese design in its DNA: finished in 1937 by Lu Qianshou with Palmer & Turner, crowned with a gentle green pyramidal Chinese roof, bracket-set eaves and lattice windows. Still a working Bank of China branch — step into the banking hall during business hours to see the marble columns and period detailing for free.
AdmissionFree — the banking hall, during bank hours
HoursRoughly 9:00-17:00 on weekdays (bank hours)
LandmarkBund No. 23
Address23 Zhongshan East 1st Road
Weekday daytime the hall has almost no tourists. For the roof and lattice details, step back to the promenade for the full view.
How to visit
- Look up for three things: the green-glazed pyramidal roof, the bracket-set (dougong) eaves, and the openwork lattice windows — a textbook of 1930s 'Chinese Renaissance' skyscraper design.
- Inside the banking hall, look past the counters: black-marble desks laid out as the Chinese character 'zhong' (中), sixteen octagonal marble columns, and an 'Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea' motif in the bronze ceiling ornament.
- It is a working bank branch, not a museum: pass security, look quietly, and don't disturb customers or linger at the counters for photos.
Did you know
- The original scheme really was a 34-storey twin tower far taller than Sassoon House next door before being cut down — the tale that Victor Sassoon forced it lower has no documentary proof (the silver-crisis economy is the likelier culprit), the even more popular retelling — a court ruling forcing it 30 cm below the Sassoon pyramid — is just as unsourced; but the rooftop rivalry is plain to see from the corner of Nanjing Road.
- The structure topped out in 1937, but war delayed the bank's move-in until New Year's Day 1946; since 1996 it has been on China's national heritage register as part of the Bund ensemble.
Source · TripMind verified 2026-08-31+ Add to trip