Hong Kong Heritage Museum

Tourists interested in getting a real insight into the island’s culture and history should definitely make a trip to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. Located away from the frenzied heart of the city—designed like a traditional si he yuan (a compound built around a central courtyard)—the 7,500 sq m museum is organised into 12 exhibition galleries, each of which are a testimony to the culture, history and arts of the city’s past. Six of these exhibitions are permanent, while the remaining half dozen change periodically. The Cantonese opera hall traces the development of opera in Hong Kong, and is one of the most intriguing of them all, along with the History of the New Territories exhibition which gives a fascinating account of the city’s transition from a rural landscape to a thriving metropolis (and everything in between). Unlike what you’d expect, this is one museum that you won’t find staid and boring—a lot of the exhibits are interactive—and there’s even a Children's Discovery Gallery where the kids will be thoroughly entertained.