Shanghai Natural History Museum. — Attraction in Shanghai

The Shanghai Natural History Museum (Chinese: 上海自然博物馆; pinyin: Shànghǎi Zìrán Bówùguǎn; Shanghainese: Zånhae Zyzoe Pohvehguoe) is a museum dedicated to natural history in the city of Shanghai, China. It is one of the largest museums of natural sciences in China.Formerly housed in the Shanghai Cotton Exchange Building, the museum was moved to a purpose-built site in the Jing'an Sculpture Park in 2015.

The museum was established in 1956 in the Shanghai Cotton Exchange Building, a classical British structure built in 1923. It was located at 260 East Yan'an Road in Huangpu District, near the intersection of South Henan Road. It was designated a Heritage Building by the Shanghai Municipal Government in 1994. However, the Yan'an Elevated Road has since been constructed within meters in front of the building.

The new 40,000 square-meter building is in the Jing'an Sculpture Park. Opened to the public in 2015, the Shanghai Natural History Museum has moved to the new location.

The museum has a collection of 240,000 samples, including over 62,000 pieces of animal specimens, 135,000 plant specimens, 700 specimens of the Stone Age, and 1,700 specimens of minerals. There are also rare species which cannot be found elsewhere outside China, such as a Yellow River mammoth, a giant salamander, a giant panda, and a Yangtze Alligator.

The largest exhibit is a 140-million-year-old dinosaur skeleton of Mamenchisaurus hochuanensis Young et Zhao from Sichuan Province, which is over four stories high. The museum also has two mummies and several...

Amazing display of history and evolution from the Big Bang to the present day, the exhibits are well-organized to tell the story of each archaeological period.

Many displays are recreated/replicas, but they are highly detailed and almost lifelike, and beautifully displayed, as seen in other reviews. Most exhibitions are available with English text, however some paragraph long explanations are in Chinese.

Great for kids and quite interesting for adults, the museum is considered large (5 floors) and crowded (I visited on Tuesday). Make sure that you spare at least two hours for your visit.

The upper floors, where you enter the museum, are very well maintained, but some sections of the lower floor appear unmaintained, with broken interactive exhibitions, faded text, and a confusing floor plan. Additionally, the dinosaur exhibition at the center is closed for renovations (as of April 2025), but the well-maintained section maintains the same quality as the upper floors!

Recommended to book through the "上海科技馆自然博物馆天文馆门票" WeChat miniapp for 30 CNY/person, entry time slots are very flexible with options of 09:00-12:30 or 12:30-16:00, plenty of tickets are available, so it is up to you whether to book in advance or not.

Foreigners need to use manual channel to enter, the staff will check your passport number and let you in, the process is fast and no...

Among Shanghai’s monumental cultural institutions, the Natural History Museum stood out as slightly better than its peers. The spiraling architecture and thoughtful use of light created a sense of flow.

The exhibits ranged from dinosaur fossils to ecological dioramas and human evolution. While some displays still felt formulaic, there was more coherence and storytelling here than I had found in the other Shanghai giants. The skeletal reconstructions in particular were striking, evoking a sense of awe.

The building itself—a modern, cavernous spiral descending into thematic zones. Crowds are large, at times unsavoury, but the design dispersed them slightly more effectively.

The Shanghai Natural History Museum was far from perfect, but slightly better than the city’s other mega-museums. It showed that when narrative and design align, even vast scale can feel human. While not deeply memorable, it was a reminder that progress in curation, like in economics, comes in...