Shanghai & Hong Kong Museum of Banking History
MuseumThe Bund & East Nanjing Road
SHANGHAI & HONG KONG MUSEUM OF BANKING HISTORY · HUGANG YINHANG LISHI ZHANLANGUAN
Free
☾ ✦
Possibly the Bund area's best free walk-in interior: the 1926 East Asia Building's original banking hall, two minutes behind the riverfront on Sichuan Road. The 24-metre marble counter, wall panels and floor are 1926 originals, the vault keeps its Mosler door, and a black-and-white spiral staircase leads up to the second floor — no ticket, no reservation, open daily 10:00-17:00. Just register at the door.
AdmissionFree, no reservation — just register at the door
HoursDaily 10:00-17:00, last entry 16:30
Address299 Sichuan Middle Road (near Jiujiang Road)
EntranceEnter through the East Asia Building's bank door on Sichuan Middle Road; the museum occupies the original ground-floor banking hall
Almost nobody queues here — when the riverfront is packed, one turn onto Sichuan Road buys you quiet; loop back to the river via Jiujiang Road after.
How to visit
- The vault keeps its original American Mosler door; look for the balance-scale motif in the stair railings — a symbol of fair dealing.
- The black-and-white spiral staircase leads straight to the second-floor gallery — the museum's photo spot.
- The theme is a century of Shanghai-Hong Kong banking ties — photos, bills, artefacts; a free counterpart to the reservation-only HSBC Building lobby nearby.
- Free walk-in is the 2025 policy — older guides and Wikipedia still describe a Tue/Thu/Sat reservation system; trust the door.
Did you know
- The 24-metre black-and-white marble counter, the wall panels and the inlaid floor are all 1926 originals — you stand exactly where the depositors stood a century ago.
- The East Asia Building went up in 1926, an Art Deco design by Hungarian architect C. H. Gonda, and has housed the Bank of East Asia's Shanghai branch ever since — in 2018 the bank turned its own hall into this museum for its centenary (opening reports called it the first public museum by a foreign bank in mainland China).
Source · TripMind verified 2026-09-02+ Add to trip