Shanghai keeps its art in strange containers: an 1897 power station, a coal-hopper bridge, a synagogue in Tilanqiao, a basement full of Mao-era posters. Three days of galleries, opera stages and lane houses, all of it away from the Bund's camera crowds.
The flat-iron Normandie Apartments (1924, architect László Hudec) anchor a 1.7km walk past 14 heritage-plaque villas. Ba Jin's former house at No.113 Wuyuan Lu opens Tue–Sun 10:00–16:00. Plane trees the whole way.
Yang Pei Ming's basement collection at 868 Huashan Lu, Block B: over 6,000 lithographs from 1949–1979, plus a side room of pre-war Shanghai Lady calendar girls. The gate guard hands you a map to find it. Daily 10:00–17:00.
Atelier Deshaus wrapped 33,000 sqm of raw concrete 'vaulted umbrellas' around a 1950s coal-hopper unloading bridge. Classical Chinese ink and revolutionary-era canvases below, contemporary shows above. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:30.
China's first state-run contemporary art museum, inside the former Nanshi power plant whose 165m chimney now works as a giant thermometer. Permanent floors are free; the Shanghai Biennale takes all seven levels in even years. Tue–Sun 11:00–19:00.
The 2024 Pudong wing on Century Avenue: 113,000 sqm over six floors of bronzes, Song ceramics, Ming huanghuali furniture and calligraphy, plus dedicated ancient Egypt galleries. Tue–Sun, closed Mondays.
Jean-Marie Charpentier's 1998 building on People's Square, its upturned glass roof designed to catch good fortune. Italian marble lobby, a 1,800-seat lyric hall and two smaller stages; the box office runs 09:00–19:30 daily.
The scarlet dougong-bracketed China Pavilion from Expo 2010, now 167,000 sqm of modern Chinese art. The 128m animated version of Along the River During the Qingming Festival runs on a loop downstairs. Tue–Sun 10:00–18:00.
The 1925 Tianchan stage on Fuzhou Lu, 928 seats, is the city's working home of Peking and Kunqu opera — gongs, water sleeves and painted faces most evenings at 19:15, with English surtitles on the side screens.
A 550m curve of 1920s Hongkou where Lu Xun, Ding Ling and the League of Left-Wing Writers met. Bronze statues of the writers sit on the pavement between Hongde Temple's Chinese-roofed church and the Xishi Bell Tower.
The 1927 Ohel Moishe Synagogue in Tilanqiao, centre of the district where around 20,000 refugees from Nazi Europe lived after 1943. The 2020 extension carries all 18,578 known names on a copper wall.
Taikang Road's shikumen lanes became studios in 1998 when painter Chen Yifei took a warehouse here. Three narrow alleys now hold roughly 200 workshops, tea rooms and bars, with residents' laundry still strung overhead.
A 1920s stone-gate lane house restored room by room: pawn tickets on the study desk, a rice bin in the kitchen, and the cramped tingzijian garret over the stairs that landlords rented to students and writers.