Few things make you feel your age quite like spotting a lift you remember from childhood sitting behind museum glass. That is one of the first things that hits you at the revamped Singapore History Gallery at the National Museum of Singapore.
After closing on 16th November 2025 for its first full revamp, the gallery reopens on 10th October 2026 with a new layout, previously unseen artefacts, interactive exhibits, and plenty of reminders that Singapore’s history isn’t just Sang Nila Otama and Stamford Raffles.
We got a sneak peek before the official reopening. Here’s what to look out for across the 7 zones, from a rickshaw you can actually pull to Zouk’s original signboard and a 1978 HDB lift. Plus, opening weekend is free for everyone, and there’s a grumpy new mascot waiting outside.
Table of Contents
The Singapore History Gallery is on Level 1 of the National Museum and takes visitors through around 700 years of Singapore’s history, from its beginnings as a 14th-century kingdom in the Malay world to the Singapore we know today.
Your visit actually starts next door at Singapore Odyssea: A Journey Through Time in the Shaw Foundation Glass Rotunda. This immersive experience sets the scene with old myths and maritime milestones before leading you into the main gallery.
Inside, the story unfolds chronologically across 7 zones. This time around, the museum has put more emphasis on the experiences of ordinary people alongside the major historical events, with new research, previously unseen artefacts and interactive exhibits that let you do more than just read a plaque.
| Zone | Era | Highlights |
| Fluid Beginnings | 1300s-1800s |
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| Colonial City | 1800s-1930s |
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| Fall of the Fortress | Late 1930s-1940s |
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| Towards a New Identity | 1950s-1960s |
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| Becoming Singapore | 1960s-1980s |
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| Being Singaporean | 1980s-1990s |
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| Looking Global | 2000s-present |
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Each zone has a voice input station where you can record a short response to a question. The prompts range from what first brought people to Singapore’s shores to what it means to belong in a city that is constantly changing.
Your answers aren’t just left floating in the ether. They are fed into the gallery’s final room, where Singapore’s history stretches across the walls as one long landscape. A projected river runs across the floor, carrying visitors’ voices towards it.
The room then transforms those responses into a vision of Singapore’s future, complete with a short reflection built from visitors’ own words. Basically, you get to leave your own little footnote in Singapore’s history. Choose your words wisely.
The Singapore Stone was originally part of a much larger boulder at the mouth of the Singapore River. The British blew up the boulder in 1843, leaving behind the fragment that survives today.
The stone is believed to date somewhere between the 10th and 14th centuries. Its surface is covered in Kawi script, an old writing system used across the Malay world, but its inscription has never been fully deciphered. In other words, Singapore has been sitting on a centuries-old mystery this whole time.
The new display makes it easier to appreciate the stone up close. Projections trace its journey from the Singapore River to the museum, while a 3D model lets you spin it around on screen. There’s also a replica surface that you can touch to get a feel for the carvings.
The Colonial City zone has one of the gallery’s most hands-on exhibits, and it is exactly what it sounds like. Rickshaws arrived in Singapore in 1880. Here, you can grab the poles of a recreated rickshaw and pull different passengers through scenes of old Singapore. Go faster or slower and your passengers will react accordingly.
A real single-seater rickshaw weighs more than 50kg. Thankfully, the museum’s version is closer to 30kg, so you probably won’t need to book a physio appointment afterwards.
There’s another interesting first nearby: the first printed edition of the Hikayat Abdullah from 1849, loaned by the National Library.
Its author, Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, worked with Raffles, and the book contains the only known physical description of him: medium build, light brown hair, and a slight stoop. So if you’ve ever wondered what Raffles actually looked like, this is about as close as you’re getting. And no, apparently he did not look quite like the statue.
Things take a much darker turn in Fall of the Fortress, which covers the years surrounding the Japanese Occupation. Among the exhibits are personal belongings recovered from victims of the Sook Ching massacre, giving a more personal look at one of the most painful chapters in Singapore’s history.
There’s also a British Surrender Morse Code Station where you can step into the shoes of a signal operator on 15th February 1942.
First, you’ll learn the basics of Morse code. Then, the clock starts ticking, and you have to tap out the message Singapore has fallen. Your version is checked against the correct message before Winston Churchill’s broadcast announcing the surrender plays. It’s a short interactive, but the historical context makes it a sobering one.
Nearby is the pocket diary of Lim Bo Seng, which documents his final days in Singapore and his work with Force 136, the British special operations unit. There’s also an interactive version of a painting by Force 136 veteran Tan Chong Tee. Pick objects representing his memories, and the painting gradually appears in animated ink strokes.
Music fans will want to stop here. For the first time, the gallery is displaying Zubir Said’s Strohmenger grand piano, the instrument he composed Majulah Singapura on. The piano was gifted to him by the Indonesian Club.
The Towards a New Identity zone also features a 1959 poster of the 51 assemblymen, including 5 elected women, which was notable at the time.
Further inside, you can sit in a recreated room showing Lee Kuan Yew’s televised press conference on Singapore’s separation from Malaysia and take in the moment that changed the country’s trajectory.
An actual HDB lift from Ang Mo Kio has been brought into the gallery. The lift served a block around the Ang Mo Kio town centre from the late 1970s. While many HDB lifts at the time only stopped at every 4th or 5h floor, this particular one stopped at every floor. Which, in hindsight, was probably a major blessing for anyone coming home with several bags of groceries.
The lift stayed largely unchanged for more than 40 years before being removed in 2024 during upgrading works. It is displayed alongside The Lift, a 1976 poem about the excitement, frustration and even fear that came with moving from kampungs into new high-rise housing.
Other highlights in Becoming Singapore include a Fairchild Semiconductor worker’s handbook and pins from the 1980s. The owner worked the 11pm to 7am night shift for higher pay so she could look after her family during the day.
There’s also a recreation of a void deck where you can read Arthur Yap’s “poem 2 mothers in a h d b playground”.
This is probably the gallery’s most nostalgia-heavy zone. You enter through a passageway styled after Orchard Road, complete with old-school street lamps and signboards.
Inside, an interactive hawker table lets you tap and rotate different dishes to learn about their histories. There’s also a trivia game inspired by the colourful melamine plates that have held countless plates of char kway teow, chicken rice and other hawker favourites.
Then comes the Great Singapore Workout. Back in 1993, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong led more than 26,000 people through the exercise routine at the Padang, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest aerobics session in one place.
Now, you can follow along with archival footage and try the workout yourself. We won’t judge your form.
Clubbers of a certain vintage will probably recognise the original Zouk signboard from its Jiak Kim Street days. Next to it is the green Septagon lounge chair from Phuture, which could fit up to 7 people. Yes, this is basically a museum exhibit and nostalgia trip rolled into one.
Image credit: National Museum of Singapore
The final zone, Looking Global, brings the story into more recent decades. It opens with The Lion City 2012-2026, a timelapse by photographer Keith Loutit that compresses almost 15 years of Singapore’s construction and transformation into 2 minutes and 39 seconds.
The impressive part is how he made it. There were no drones or fixed cameras involved. Instead, he manually lined up every frame.
You’ll also find 2 Singapore-made inventions here. The first is the Trek 2000 ThumbDrive from 2000, which the museum credits as the world’s first USB storage device. At one trade fair, the company reportedly demonstrated how durable it was by throwing it onto the floor before using it to play a music video.
The second is the cPass COVID-19 antibody test kit, which was developed in Singapore in just 70 days.
But the exhibit that might hit closest to home is Edwin Koo’s Transit series. The photographs show packed MRT carriages filled with commuters doing what Singaporeans do best: avoiding eye contact, keeping to themselves and hiding behind their earphones. You’ll probably recognise yourself in there somewhere.
The reopening kicks off Stories of Everyday, the National Museum’s 139th birthday celebrations. Running from 10th-18th October, the celebration is free to enter and includes a mix of markets, performances, installations, and heritage programmes.
Image credit: T.H.E Dance Company
Some of the main draws include:
Full programme details are available on the Stories of Everyday page.
Singapore has a new stone-faced mascot. Literally. Stoney is based on the Singapore Stone and comes with a slightly dramatic backstory. He wakes up by the Singapore River with no memory of who he is, then wanders around Singapore trying to figure out where he came from. The permanent frown is, frankly, very relatable.
You can find a giant Stoney on the museum lawn and catch meet-and-greet sessions during the celebrations. There’s also a drop-in craft activity called Stoney, A Softie at Heart, where you can make your own Stoney out of pipe cleaners.
Image credit: National Museum of Singapore
Want to bring him home? A Stoney keychain plush costs $13.90 at the Museum Market by ABRY store from 10th October. The first 5,000 buyers will also get a free sticker sheet, so kiasu shoppers, you know what to do.
Singapore Citizens and PRs can enter the Singapore History Gallery for free, while everyone gets free entry from 10th-12th October as part of the reopening celebrations.
Here are the prices for tourists and foreign residents:
| Ticket type | Price |
| Children aged 6 & below | Free |
| Adults |
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| Students & Seniors |
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Tickets are available at the Visitor Services counter and online.
The nearest MRT stations are Bras Basah station on the Circle Line and Bencoolen station on the Downtown Line, both within walking distance of the museum.
The minimum is probably 2 hours even if you speed through some zones. Give yourself extra time if you want to try the interactive exhibits, especially during opening weekend when queues are likely to be longer. Our advice is to make multiple visits to avoid being overwhelmed at one go.
The Level 2 Life in Singapore galleries are still being revamped and are scheduled to reopen in early 2027, ahead of the museum’s 140th anniversary.
The revamped Singapore History Gallery is less about standing around reading dates on walls and more about actually getting stuck into Singapore’s story.
You can pull a rickshaw, tap out a wartime Morse code message, see the piano used to compose Majulah Singapura, step into a 1978 HDB lift, attempt the Great Singapore Workout, and even leave your own voice in the gallery’s final room.
There’s enough here for history buffs, but plenty for anyone who grew up in Singapore and wants to see familiar bits of everyday life turned into museum exhibits.
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