Kuala Lumpur was a tin miners' camp at a muddy river junction in 1857 and a national capital a century later. These three days trace that compression: Hindu and Malay antiquity, colonial Moorish plaster, and the clan halls and stilt houses still standing between the towers.
A 400-million-year-old limestone massif turned Hindu shrine in 1891 by trader K. Thamboosamy Pillai. Climb the 272 painted steps past the 42.7m gold Murugan statue (2006) to Temple Cave; Ramayana Cave sits at the base.
The national museum opened in 1963 on the site of the old Selangor Museum, destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. Four galleries run from Perak Man's 11,000-year-old skeleton through the Malacca Sultanate to 1957. Open 09:00–17:00.
Opened 1998 beside the Lake Gardens, with 10,000 objects in twelve galleries: architectural scale models of the world's mosques, Mughal and Ottoman Qur'ans, Chinese-Muslim ceramics and a reassembled Ottoman room. Open 09:30–18:00.
KL's oldest Hindu temple, founded in 1873 as the Pillai family's private shrine and opened to the public in the 1920s. The 1972 gopuram carries 228 sculpted deities, and the silver chariot kept here leads the Thaipusam procession to Batu Caves.
The Union Jack came down on this cricket padang at midnight on 31 August 1957. Facing it stands A.C. Norman's 1897 Sultan Abdul Samad Building, Moorish-revival brick built for the colonial secretariat, with the 1884 Royal Selangor Club opposite.
Set in the 1899 government printing office, the gallery pairs archive photographs of Yap Ah Loy's tin-mining kampung with a 40-square-metre scale model of the modern city, making the jump from 1857 stilt huts to KLCC legible in one room.
Built in eleven months for independence, this is where Tunku Abdul Rahman raised his hand and called 'Merdeka!' seven times before 20,000 people in 1957. Restored in 2007 as a national heritage site; the 1962 Stadium Negara stands next door.
A.B. Hubback's 1910 station is white-plaster Moorish fantasy — minarets, chattris and horseshoe arches over platforms laid to move tin to Port Swettenham. The 1917 KTM Headquarters faces it across Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin.
Gazetted in 1900 as a Malay reserve and still run by its own management board, this is a village of timber stilt houses inside the capital. Walk Jalan Raja Muda Musa past Bugis- and Limas-roofed homes framed by the towers behind.
Sze Ya Temple (1864) was raised by Kapitan Yap Ah Loy to the deity he credited for surviving the Selangor Civil War, and sits at a deliberate angle for feng shui. Two lanes away, Kwai Chai Hong's restored 1950s shophouses carry murals of the old back-alley trades.
Finished in 1906 for Chan clansmen from Guangdong, with Shek Wan ceramic roof friezes shipped in from Foshan and open courtyards in southern Chinese style. Ancestral tablets are still tended; Guan Di Temple (1888) is a short walk north.
Opened in 1989 by KL's Hainanese association on Robson Heights, this six-tier temple honours Mazu, protector of the seafarers who arrived as coolies, alongside Guanyin and Shuiwei. The upper terrace looks across the whole valley.