Shenzhen built its culture the way it built its skyline — fast, and mostly since 2000. Three days here move from free state art museums and starchitect landmarks to Cantonese opera stages and the Ming-dynasty streets the city grew around.
China's first state museum devoted to a single artist, opened 1997 in Overseas Chinese Town. Holds He Xiangning's ink lions, tigers and plum blossoms alongside rotating contemporary exhibitions. Open 09:00-17:30, closed Mondays; entry free with passport.
Built in 1997 for the Lingnan-school master Guan Shanyue, whose landscape ink work hangs in the Great Hall of the People. Ground floor rotates national ink and calligraphy shows; upper floors hold the permanent collection. Closed Mondays.
Coop Himmelb(l)au's 2016 double museum in the Futian Cultural District: two boxes wrapped in one skin around a silver blob-shaped atrium. Contemporary art on one side, the city's own urban-planning archive on the other. 10:00-18:00, closed Mondays.
Isozaki's 2006 pair on Fuzhong Yi Road: the library's glass 'book wall' and the concert hall's Golden Tree foyer of gilded steel columns. The lobbies are open to walk-ins and the library reading rooms run until 21:00.
Occupies Block A under the Civic Center's wave roof. Four permanent galleries cover Pearl River Delta archaeology, the Ming coastal garrisons, the 1980 Special Economic Zone decision and Cantonese folk custom. Open 10:00-18:00, closed Mondays.
The 42,000 sqm flagship of a city that declares itself a 'City of Reading', with an art-book floor, a stationery and seal-carving hall and a sunken plaza of independent cafés. Open daily to 22:00, Fridays to 23:00.
Opened November 2023: 66,000 sqm of white stone galleries by KSP Jürgen Engel, giving the city's 1976 collection of Chinese ink and print work room to breathe alongside international loan shows. 10:00-18:00, closed Mondays.
The 1989 Luohu landmark, one of the original 'Eight Great Buildings' of early Shenzhen, still the main stage for Cantonese opera, symphony and touring dance. Tickets typically ¥80-680; curtain is usually 19:30 or 20:00.
The walled administrative seat that governed this coast from AD 331, later swallowed whole by the city as an urban village. Its 2019-2020 renewal left Ming gates, a Qing county yamen and handshake tenements side by side, now full of small galleries and bookshops.
Shenzhen's oldest surviving temple complex, founded in the Song era and rebuilt across the Ming and Qing for sailors petitioning the sea goddess Mazu before crossing the delta. Sits on the hillside above the container port at Chiwan.
Fumihiko Maki's 2017 waterfront building in Shekou, run with London's V&A as China's first design museum partnership. Three galleries of design and craft exhibitions plus a rooftop terrace facing the Shenzhen Bay shipping lane.
The 1962 French liner Ancerville, bought by China in 1973 and beached here in 1984 as Shenzhen's first leisure landmark — now the anchor of a plaza of Cantonese, Korean and Russian restaurants where Shekou's expat and local crowds mix.