Old City of Shanghai, Shanghai — Area Guide & Where to Stay

What are the main landmarks in Old City of Shanghai?

The quarter orients around its vanished wall. Its Dajing Ge Pavilion survives as the one standing piece of the fortification that once ringed the Old City of Shanghai, and the rounded street loop that replaced the rest still traces where the ramparts ran. The circle is the map.

Anyone crossing the Old City of Shanghai reads distance against the Dajing Ge Pavilion at the core, the Puxi grid spreading outward, and the Huangpu River that separates this bank from the Pudong towers to the east.

What is the history of Old City of Shanghai?

The wall carries the quarter's older story. A single gate pavilion survives in the Dajing Ge Pavilion, which shows how the ramparts once enclosed the Old City of Shanghai as a self-governing Chinese town, sealed off from the foreign concessions that later grew across the rest of Shanghai. The stone came down first.

When the fortifications were dismantled, their oval line became a ring road, and the 老城厢 characters that name this core still set it apart from the concession-era Puxi streets that ring it.

Where is Old City of Shanghai?

The Old City of Shanghai holds the rounded historic core of Huangpu District on the Puxi bank, its old wall line marked by the Dajing Ge Pavilion and facing the Pudong towers across the Huangpu River.