{"id":33396,"date":"2026-02-13T18:50:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=33396"},"modified":"2026-02-13T18:56:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T10:56:06","slug":"the-sultan-abdul-samad-building","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=33396","title":{"rendered":"The Sultan Abdul Samad building"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2017, I published a detailed report about KL Heritage<\/a>. In this report, I give more information about the impressive Sultan Abdul Samad building, the former Government Offices during the colonial era. After the independence of Malaysia, the building housed the superior courts of Malaysia until they were relocated to Putrajaya in 2003. Since then we could only admire the impressive building from the outside. But last year it was refurbished, and a few weeks ago it reopened to the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Free access during February, so we joined the crowd to have a look inside. We parked our car under Merdeka Square and walked to the building. The facade must have been cleaned; it looked fresh and wonderful. It was already late afternoon, as we wanted to take night pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We didn’t even need to register; we could just walk in. The building is large, clear ground plans are helpful for your orientation. The group floor has two galleries. We started with the Royal Selangor gallery (number 1 in the plan). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is mostly a sales gallery. Royal Selangor,<\/a> world-renowned for its pewter, has its visitor center in Setapak, and has now opened a branch here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Beautiful stuff, very expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One part of the gallery is the School of Hard Knocks (5), where workshops will be held for people who want to craft their own pewter dish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is also a cafe (4) where we decided to have a coffee and cake<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next, we wanted to visit the Kuala Lumpur Gallery(2), but it closed at 6 pm. This gallery about the history of KL will be more interesting, so I have to come back another time. I understand that the exhibits are basically the same as the former KL City Gallery (See my KL Heritage blog), but it will be interesting to see them in this new location<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So we walked up to the first floor. Of course we took numerous pictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There are more restaurants in the building, on the ground plan I counted six(!). This is a real restaurant,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We could not resist the temptation to take a picture of ourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There were many visitors, both locals and tourists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At around 7 pm, the lights came on. We went back to the ground floor. This is the backside of the building, a nice, quiet courtyard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We left the building and crossed Merdeka Square to the Selangor Club. What a fantastic view of the whole building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A few more pictures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The building deserves to become one of the top attractions of Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before driving back home, we took a few more night pictures of other interesting buildings in the region. Here is the Masjid Jamek, rather dwarfed by the modern background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Old Railway Station and the National Mosque.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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KL Tower and the Merdeka 118 skyscraper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No idea if access will remain free after this month. For those living in Malaysia, use the opportunity. Open from 8 am until 10 pm, but galleries close at 6 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2017, I published a detailed report about KL Heritage. In this report, I give more information about the impressive Sultan Abdul Samad building, the former Government Offices during the colonial era. After the independence of Malaysia, the building housed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-kuala-selangor"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2026-02-09-19.31.54.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2LqIR-8GE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33396"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33439,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33396\/revisions\/33439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}