A Forbidden Hill and the Merlion, Singapore's Civic District and River

Look across this lawn, Fort Canning Green. Malay speakers called the hill Bukit Larangan, the Forbidden Hill. It was the seat of Temasek, a 14th-century Malay kingdom also known as Singapura. A shrine on the eastern slope, Keramat Iskandar Shah, is believed to be the tomb of the kingdom's last ruler. In 1928, workers here uncovered gold ornaments from the 14th century, of a style linked to Java's Majapahit kingdom. Other finds, now in the National Museum, include Yuan-dynasty stoneware, Indian glass bangles and regional ceramics. They show that this river mouth was already a trading port long before the British arrived. In 1819 the British raised a flag on this hill and later built a governor's house here. By 1822 an experimental spice garden, with nutmeg and clove trees, was already being planted under William Farquhar, the first Resident. A fort was built in 1859 and 1860, and the hill was named Fort Canning after Viscount Charles John Canning, Governor-General of India. On 15 February 1942, in the underground Battle Box on this hill, Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and his commanders decided to surrender Singapore to Japanese forces. The Battle Box is a separate, ticketed exhibition; this walk stays on the public paths. When you are ready, walk down the slope to the east, past the keramat and the spice garden, out to Hill Street, then along Coleman Street to St Andrew's Cathedral, the white church beside the Padang. It is a little under a kilometre downhill.

The white church in front of you is St Andrew's Cathedral, the oldest Anglican church in Singapore, named for the patron saint of Scotland. Stamford Raffles set this ground aside for a church in 1823. George D. Coleman designed the first building; its foundation stone was laid on 9 November 1835, and the first service was held on 18 June 1837. A later spire, built without a lightning conductor, was struck twice, in 1845 and 1849. The damaged church was closed in 1852 and then pulled down. The present building was designed by Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald MacPherson in a Gothic style. The foundation stone was laid on 4 March 1856. Indian convict labourers, supervised by Major J. F. A. McNair, did the construction. The walls are finished in chunam, a plaster of shell lime, egg white, sugar and water steeped with coconut husk, polished until it shines. The first service here was held on 1 October 1861. The church was consecrated on 25 January 1862, and became a cathedral in 1870. In February 1942, before Singapore fell, it was used as an emergency hospital. The grounds are generally open from 7:00 to 20:00. This is an active church. Dress as you would for a service, keep your voice low, and go inside only if the door is open and no worship is underway. When you are ready, walk to the north end of the great field beside the church, then south along its seaward side, Connaught Drive, to the Singapore Cricket Club, about 500 metres.

You are at the south end of the Padang, the Malay word for "field," with the Singapore Cricket Club behind you and the grass running north toward the cathedral. Before land reclamation created Esplanade Park, this plain ran down to the sea. The Sejarah Melayu, the Malay Annals, places a landing here in the 13th century: the Palembang prince Sang Nila Utama, the chronicle says, saw a creature he took to be a lion and named the island Singapura, Lion City in Sanskrit. That story is traditional, not a documented event. The British camped on this plain after 1819 and later called it the Padang. The Singapore Cricket Club was founded at this south end in 1852. At the north end, the Singapore Recreation Club was founded in 1883 by about thirty Eurasian residents, after the governor granted them a pavilion there. On 15 February 1942, after the fall of Singapore, Allied prisoners of war were gathered on this field and marched to the camp at Changi. On 12 September 1945, crowds stood here again to witness the Japanese surrender in the Municipal Building, today's City Hall, across the grass. Yusof bin Ishak was installed as Singapore's first Yang di-Pertuan Negara, or Head of State, here on 3 December 1959. The first National Day Parade of independent Singapore was held on this field on 9 August 1966. The Padang was gazetted as a National Monument in 2022. Walk west and a little north, about 170 metres, to the steps of City Hall, the building with the tall Corinthian columns facing the field.

The long colonnade in front of you belongs to the former City Hall, completed in 1929 as the Municipal Building, to designs by F. D. Meadows and Alexander Gordon. The Italian sculptor Cavaliere Rudolfo Nolli supplied the Corinthian columns. In 1951, after King George VI granted Singapore city status, the building was renamed City Hall. To your left, under the copper-green dome, stands the former Supreme Court, designed by Frank D. Ward and opened on 3 August 1939 by Governor Shenton Thomas. Since 2015 the two buildings have housed the National Gallery Singapore. On 12 September 1945, in the chamber behind these columns, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander in Southeast Asia, accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in the region from General Seishiro Itagaki. A victory parade was held on the Padang the same day, and Mountbatten addressed the crowd from these steps. On 3 June 1959, Lee Kuan Yew spoke from these steps at a rally to mark internal self-government. On 5 June he and the first cabinet were sworn in in the City Hall Chamber. On 16 September 1963 he read the Proclamation of Malaysia from these steps. On 9 August 1965 he issued the Proclamation of Singapore from his office in this building. The Gallery is open daily from 10:00 to 19:00. Singapore citizens and permanent residents have free general admission; other visitors need a ticket. The walk stays on the steps and the street. Continue south, about 250 metres, into Empress Place, to the paired buildings with the 54-metre clock tower, the Victoria Theatre and Concert Hall.

The clock tower in front of you, 54 metres high, joins two buildings. To one side is the Victoria Theatre, built between 1855 and 1862 as the Town Hall, to designs by the colonial engineer John Bennett. To the other is the Victoria Memorial Hall, built between 1903 and 1905 in memory of Queen Victoria, who had died in 1901, and designed by R. A. J. Bidwell of Swan and Maclaren. Governor John Anderson opened it on 18 October 1905. The Town Hall was then remodelled to match, and reopened as the Victoria Theatre on 11 February 1909. The clock and bells were a gift of the Straits Trading Company. The Duchess of Connaught set the clock going on 1 February 1907. In 1919, for the centenary of the British settlement, the bronze statue of Stamford Raffles by Thomas Woolner, first unveiled on the Padang in 1887, was moved to the front of this hall. During the Japanese Occupation the statue was taken down and stored; it was put back in 1946. In early 1942 the Memorial Hall served as a makeshift hospital for people wounded in Japanese air raids. After the war, from 1946 to 1947, it was a venue for war-crime trials. In 1980 it reopened as the Victoria Concert Hall, the first home of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra. Walk about 80 metres to The Arts House, the pale building on Old Parliament Lane, with a bronze elephant at the entrance.

The building in front of you is likely the oldest surviving building in Singapore. George D. Coleman designed it in 1826 and 1827 as a house for John A. Maxwell, a Scottish merchant. Maxwell never lived in it. The house stood on land that Raffles had set aside for public and government use, so Maxwell leased it to the British administration as a courthouse, at 500 rupees a month. The courts and government offices moved in as soon as it was finished. The East India Company bought the building in 1842. It served as a courthouse and, from 1868, as the Supreme Court, until the new Supreme Court on the Padang opened in 1939. After the Second World War it housed the Department of Social Welfare. In 1954 and 1955 it was altered to create a chamber for the new Legislative Assembly, which first sat after Singapore was granted partial internal self-government in 1955. After independence in 1965 this was Parliament House, until Parliament moved in 1999 to the building next door. The old house reopened in 2004 as The Arts House. It was gazetted as a National Monument, with its annex, in 1992. The bronze elephant at the entrance commemorates the visit of King Chulalongkorn of Siam, today's Thailand, to Singapore in 1871. Walk the last few metres to the white statue on the north bank of the river, the Raffles landing site, with the former government offices, now the Asian Civilisations Museum, behind it.

The white figure on this bank is a polymarble replica of Thomas Woolner's 1887 bronze of Stamford Raffles, the statue that now stands in front of the Victoria Memorial Hall. This copy was unveiled in 1972, on a spot believed to be where Raffles came ashore. Treat the exact pin as a commemoration, not a surveyed landing. On 28 January 1819, Raffles's ship, the Indiana, anchored off St John's Island. The next day, 29 January, Raffles and William Farquhar landed and met Temenggong Abdul Rahman, who held authority on the island. A flag was raised on 30 January. Tengku Long, whom the British recognised as Sultan Hussein Shah, arrived on 1 February. On 6 February 1819, Raffles, the Sultan and the Temenggong signed a treaty that allowed the British East India Company to establish a trading post here. Farquhar was left as Resident. There was already a settlement at this river mouth: the Temenggong's house stood here, and Orang Laut, the sea people, lived on the river. Some accounts place that first landing further east, at the Rochor or Kallang. The large building behind you is the former Empress Place Building, designed by Major J. F. A. McNair and built with convict labour between 1864 and 1867 as Government Offices. It has housed the Asian Civilisations Museum since 2003. The museum is optional, open daily from 10:00 to 19:00, and until 21:00 on Fridays; check the desk for tickets. Walk west along the north bank to Elgin Bridge, cross the river, and turn along the south bank into Boat Quay, about 400 metres.

The shophouses and old warehouses along this curve of the south bank are Boat Quay. In Raffles's town plan of 1822 and 1823, the north bank was reserved for government, and the south bank for Chinese and Chulia settlers. In 1823 a hillock at Battery Road was levelled to make Commercial Square, later Raffles Place, and the earth was used to fill this swampy bank and create the quay. Merchants built godowns and private jetties here. Alexander Laurie Johnston opened Singapore's first European trading house nearby in 1820, and the Chinese philanthropist Tan Tock Seng kept offices and warehouses on this bank. In Hokkien the quarter was called Tua Poh, "Greater Town." Because of the wide bend, Chinese traders also called it the belly of the carp, a shape associated with good fortune. By the 1860s, Boat Quay still handled about three-quarters of Singapore's shipping business, even after a new harbour opened at Tanjong Pagar. By 1890, more than 100,000 people lived and worked along the river. In 1977 a ten-year clean-up of the Singapore River and the Kallang Basin began; quayside cargo work was stopped, and by 1983 the last trading boats had been moved to Pasir Panjang. The Urban Redevelopment Authority gazetted Boat Quay as a conservation area on 7 July 1989. The shophouses now hold restaurants and bars; passenger boats use the river. Continue east along this bank, about 350 metres, to Cavenagh Bridge, the iron bridge at the river mouth.

The iron bridge over the river is Cavenagh Bridge, the oldest crossing of the Singapore River that still stands in its original form. Construction began in 1867 and finished in 1869. It is named after Major-General Sir William Orfeur Cavenagh, the last governor of the Straits Settlements appointed from British India, in office from 1859 to 1867. His successor, Governor Harry Ord, had wanted to call it Edinburgh Bridge, after a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869, but the Legislative Council kept Cavenagh's name. The consulting engineer was Rowland Mason Ordish, who used a rigid cable-stayed system later seen also on London's Albert Bridge. The steel was made and load-tested by P. and W. MacLellan in Glasgow, then shipped out and riveted on site by Indian convict labourers, in one of their last major projects in Singapore. A party of 120 sepoys was marched across the finished bridge as a live-load test. The Cavenagh coat of arms is still on the cross-beams. The bridge once joined the government quarter with Commercial Square, later Raffles Place, and the General Post Office. After Anderson Bridge was completed in 1909 and officially opened in 1910, a notice that is still on the bridge forbade "any vehicle of which the laden weight exceeds 3 cwt and to all cattle and horses." It has been a footbridge ever since. In 2019 it was gazetted as a National Monument, together with Anderson Bridge and Elgin Bridge. Walk east about 100 metres to the colonnaded block of the Fullerton, the former General Post Office.

The large building with the two-storey Doric colonnade is the former Fullerton Building, now The Fullerton Hotel. It stands at the mouth of the Singapore River, on the site of Fort Fullerton, a battery completed in 1825 and named after Robert Fullerton, the first Governor of the Straits Settlements. The fort was demolished in 1865, after merchants complained that a gun battery so close to their warehouses would draw fire. The present building was designed by Major Percy Keys and Frank Dowdeswell. Work began in 1924, and on 27 June 1928 Governor Hugh Clifford opened it and named it Fullerton Building. The General Post Office occupied the lower floors, with a tunnel under the road to a pier for ship mail. The Singapore Club occupied the upper floors. In February 1942, as Japanese aircraft bombed the city, the building was used as a makeshift hospital for wounded British soldiers. Governor Shenton Thomas took refuge in the Singapore Club after Government House was no longer safe. It was there that Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival informed the Governor of the decision to surrender, on 15 February 1942. The post office remained here until the 1990s. After a conversion that began in 1997, the building opened as a hotel on 1 January 2001, and it was gazetted as a National Monument in 2015. Walk the last stretch east, about 170 metres, to Merlion Park, at the river mouth, with a view across the bay to the Esplanade.

The statue in front of you, 8.6 metres high and weighing 70 tonnes, is the Merlion, a lion's head on a fish's body. In 1964 the British zoologist Alec Fraser-Brunner, then curator of the Van Kleef Aquarium, designed the figure as a logo for the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board: the lion for the name Singapura, the fish for Temasek, a name often explained as "sea town." The artist Kwan Sai Kheong drew the blueprint, and the craftsman Lim Nang Seng carved the statue in 1972, with help from all eight of his children, then aged 11 to 23. On 15 September 1972, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew unveiled this statue, and a smaller Merlion cub, at the mouth of the Singapore River, a short way from here. In 1997 the new Esplanade Bridge blocked the view of the Merlion from the water. In 2002 the statue was moved about 120 metres to this park. Engineers had planned to float it under the bridge on a barge, but they found an extra 0.6 metres of concrete under the sculpture, so it would not fit. Two 500-tonne cranes lifted the figure up and over the bridge. It stands again at the river mouth, on reclaimed land, facing the bay. Across the water you can see the spiked roofs of the Esplanade theatres. This is the end of the walk. City Hall MRT is about ten minutes back, north of the Padang, and Raffles Place MRT is a short walk west, behind the Fullerton.