Shenyang layers Manchu court art over Japanese colonial banks, Stalinist boulevards and Mao-era steel mills. Three days move from Liaoning's calligraphy scrolls and Qing lama temples to converted Tiexi foundries, Ping opera and Xita's Korean quarter.
China's first public museum, now in a 100,000 sqm hall in Hunnan. Twenty-two galleries hold Hongshan jade, Liao dynasty gold masks and the calligraphy collection saved from Puyi's looted Qing court — including Tang and Song scrolls. Tue-Sun 09:00-16:30, last entry 16:00.
Founded 1829 and Shenyang's oldest restaurant brand, famous for boiled dumplings with broth-steamed fillings. Sit upstairs on pedestrianised Zhongjie beside the palace wall and order the mixed steamer of pork-and-leek plus shrimp. Around ¥60-90 per person, open 10:30-20:30.
Housed in the 1930 Japanese Chosen Bank, this museum keeps the original marble banking hall, vault doors and coffered ceiling, filled with 300-plus wax figures staging a century of Manchurian finance. Open 09:00-17:00, closed Mondays.
A Gothic-revival basilica of grey brick finished in 1878, burnt in the Boxer Uprising and rebuilt in 1912, with twin 40-metre spires and a rib-vaulted nave of pointed arches. It remains the seat of the Shenyang diocese and is open outside Mass times.
Built inside the retained foundry hall of the Shenyang Casting Factory, with the original cupola furnaces, sand-casting pits and overhead cranes left standing. Halls cover machine tools, autos and the Northeast's heavy-industry century. Tue-Sun 09:00-16:30.
A former Shenyang Heavy Machinery workshop turned independent arts complex: raw steel trusses now hold galleries, design studios, vintage shops and the black-box Fanke Theatre. Ground-floor exhibition spaces are free and change monthly.
The gallery of the academy that produced the Yan'an woodcut lineage and the sculptors of Shenyang's Mao statue. Shows graduation exhibitions, oil painting and the printmaking department's editions. Open on exhibition days 09:00-16:30, closed Mondays.
Shenyang's crystalline concert hall on the Hun River, three angled glass volumes housing an opera house, symphony hall and recital room. The resident Liaoning Symphony and touring Peking-opera and ballet companies play here; tickets from ¥80 to ¥680.
The Manchu court's Tibetan-Buddhist temple, ordered by Huang Taiji in 1636 after the Mongol submission and holding the Mahakala shrine. Yellow-glazed roofs, Manchu-Mongol-Chinese-Tibetan quadrilingual steles and working lama halls. Open 08:00-16:00.
China's densest Korean-Chinese neighbourhood, built around the Qing dynasty's western pagoda: Hangul shop signs, barbecue houses, cold-noodle canteens and 24-hour soju bars along a few blocks. Lunch on naengmyeon or charcoal beef for ¥50-80.
The best preserved of the four Qing pagodas Huang Taiji set at the city's compass points, completed 1645, with a white Tibetan-style stupa and a small museum of Manchu-era Buddhist statuary and ritual bronzes in the side halls. Open 08:30-16:30.
China's oldest commercial street, laid out in the Qing as the palace's front market and now a 1.5 km promenade of Republican-era facades, night snack stalls and the Liaoning Ping Opera Company's home stage nearby, where Ping opera and errenzhuan play.