The French Concession

A look around

What you’ll be living next to. Swipe through.

1/5

Where it sits

The circle is The French Concession and roughly a 10-minute walk around it.

How far is everything?

From the middle of this area to the city's headline sights — pick your own on the city page and these become your list.

• Shanghai food & xiaolongbao18 min walk1.5 km
• Shanghai Museum8 min taxi2.6 km
• Nanjing Road10 min taxi3.2 km
• Jade Buddha Temple10 min taxi3.4 km
• Yu Garden & the Old City12 min taxi3.9 km
• The Bund14 min taxi4.5 km
• A Huangpu River cruise15 min taxi4.8 km
• Shanghai Tower & the Pudong skyline16 min taxi5.4 km

On your doorstep

What you’re living next to if you stay here.

• 4.The French Concession — The most atmospheric quarter to wander — quiet avenues canopied by plane trees, 1920s villas and shikumen lane houses now full of independent boutiques, coffee roasters and hidden bars. Get pleasantly lost around Wukang Road and Anfu Lu, coffee in hand; this leafy, elegant Shanghai is where locals and expats actually live and play, and it's the city at its most seductive.
• 7.Xintiandi & Tianzifang — Two takes on old Shanghai reborn — Xintiandi's polished shikumen lane houses turned upscale bars and restaurants, and Tianzifang's tighter maze of arty boutiques, tea rooms and cafés in a restored lane neighbourhood. Both are touristy but genuinely fun to wander, eat and drink in; together they show how Shanghai reinvents its 1920s bones for the 21st century.
• 13.The West Bund art district — Shanghai's booming contemporary-art riverside — a run of striking museums along the Huangpu south of the centre, from the vast Power Station of Art (a former power plant) to the Long Museum and the Pompidou's Chinese outpost, linked by a breezy waterfront park. Cutting-edge, spacious and a world away from the crowds; the place to see where China's art scene is heading.
• 14.A rooftop bar over the Bund — Shanghai does glamour like nowhere in China — cocktail terraces high on the Bund and in the concessions, staring straight across at the floodlit Pudong towers, plus a deep scene of speakeasies and jazz clubs below. Dress up, ride the lift, and toast the skyline; from the historic Peace Hotel jazz bar to sleek rooftop lounges, the city's nights sparkle.
• 15.Propaganda Poster Art Centre — A quirky, unmissable little museum hidden in the basement of a French Concession apartment block — a private collection of vivid Mao-era propaganda posters, tracing the turbulent decades of 20th-century China through its art. Small, fascinating and a real conversation-starter; you'll need to find it (the guard hands you a map), which is half the fun.