6 Best Sights in Singapore

The first mosque on this site was built in the early 1820s with a S$3,000 grant from the East India Company. The current structure, built in 1928 by Denis Santry of Swan & Maclaren—the architect who designed the Victoria Memorial Hall—is a dramatic building with golden domes and minarets that glisten in the sun. The walls of the vast prayer hall are adorned with green and gold mosaic tiles on which passages from the Koran are written in Arabic. The main dome has an odd architectural feature: hundreds of bottle ends are jammed in between the dome and base. This unusual feature originated as a way for lower-income Muslims to donate during the mosque's construction so that all could contribute. Five times a day—at dawn, 12:30, 4, sunset, and 8:15—the sound of the muezzin, or crier, calls the faithful to prayer. At midday on Friday, the Islamic Sabbath, Muslims from all over Singapore enter through one of the Sultan Mosque's 14 portals to recite the Koran. During Ramadan, the month of fasting, the nearby streets, especially Bussorah, and the square in front of mosque are lined with hundreds of stalls selling curries, cakes, and candy; at dusk Muslims break their day's fast in this square. Non-Muslims, too, come to enjoy the rich array of Muslim foods and the festive atmosphere. The best view of the Sultan Mosque is at the junction of Bussorah Street and Beach Road. Walk-ins are welcome Saturday through Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 2 pm to 4 pm. 

On this street of specialty shops, you'll find an eclectic mix of cafés and restaurants with trendy retail spots mixed in with shops that sell fabrics: batiks, embroidered table linens, rich silks, and velvets. 

Singapore's "outdoor art gallery" is open 24/7 amid the back alleyways off Muscat Street. Here, more than 30 colorful murals have been drawn by artists like local graffiti pioneer Slacsatu, international artists, and graduates from Singapore’s LASALLE College of the Arts and the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1845, Hajjah Fatimah, a wealthy Muslim woman married to a Bugis trader, commissioned a British architect to build this mosque (hajjah is the title given to a woman who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca). The minaret is reputedly modeled on the spire of the original St. Andrew's Church in the Civic District, but it leans at a six-degree angle. No one knows whether this was intentional or accidental, and engineers brought in to see if the minaret could be straightened have walked away shaking their heads. This relatively small mosque (and gazetted national monument) is an intimate oasis amid all the bustle. It's extremely relaxing to enter the prayer hall (remember to take your shoes off), sit in the shade of its dome, and admire the 12 lancet windows with yellow and green stained glass. French contractors and Malay artisans rebuilt the mosque in the 1930s. Hajjah Fatimah and her daughter and son-in-law are buried in an enclosure behind the mosque.

This large cultural center is in what was once the home of Malay royalty. The Malay-style mansion, which was built in the 1840s on the site of an even simpler thatched building, may have been designed by George Coleman. Next door is another grand royal bungalow: the home of the sultan's first minister. Notice its gateposts surmounted by green eagles. The center serves as a heritage institution for the local Malay community and offers free guided tours in English and Mandarin.