Heritage Trails :: Monuments Listing :: National Museum of Singapore (1886 - 1887)

Designed by McCallum and McNair, the museum was called the Raffles' Library and Museum during colonial days - Singapore's first museum and library. The museum then was devoted to natural history and ethnography. It was renamed the National Museum in 1960.

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The oldest part of the museum is the front block which opened as the Raffles Library and Museum on 12 October 1887. It was designed by Henry McCallum and construction was undertaken by two Chinese contractors. The construction of the dome proved so daunting that it drove the first contractor to madness.

In 1907, the addition of the parallel rear block doubled the size of the museum which had by then become the premier museum in British Malaya. The library contained some 30,000 volumes and the extensive museum collections concentrated on the Malayan region and included zoology, botany, geology, ethnology and numismatics.

In 1960, the library and museum were separated and Raffles Museum was renamed the National Museum in 1969. In 1972, it was given a new mandate to devote itself to the history, art and ethnology of Singapore. The zoological materials were transferred to the then University of Singapore.

In 1993, the museum underwent another transformation to become the Singapore History Museum, dedicated to the presentation of Singapore’s history and heritage.

In 2003, the building was closed for major renovations and development of an extension block. A key architectural highlight of the extension building is the 16-metre high and 24-metre wide Glass Rotunda, a modern interpretation of the old Rotunda Dome in the historic building. It re-opened in 2006 as the National Museum of Singapore.