People's Square

People's Square occupies the site of Shanghai Racecourse, a large oval track that from 1862 until the Japanese occupation was one of the great social institutions of the International Settlement. The racecourse was taken over by the Japanese military in 1941, became a sports and recreation ground under the early People's Republic, and was redesigned as the current civic plaza in the 1990s with the accompanying museum and theatre buildings.

The Shanghai Museum, opened in 1996 in a purpose-built rotunda designed to evoke a bronze ding vessel, holds one of China's most significant collections of classical art. The bronze collection is considered definitive; the ceramics, paintings, and jade collections are equally strong. Admission is free. The museum attracts queues on weekends, particularly school-holiday periods.

The Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre documents the transformation of the city with large-scale models and photographs. The centrepiece is a 1:500 scale model of central Shanghai covering several hundred square metres — an extraordinarily detailed representation of a city in continuous physical change.

Nanjing Road, Shanghai's main commercial street, begins at the east edge of People's Square and runs for over 6 kilometres to the Bund. The pedestrian section, closest to the square, is a fairly standard retail environment; it becomes more varied as it approaches the river. The stretch between People's Square and Henan Road is where the older department stores and their food halls are worth visiting for the architecture as much as the shopping.