Best Museums in Hong Kong

M+ opened in late 2021 in a huge slab of a building on the West Kowloon waterfront, with a facade that doubles as an outdoor screen at night. Its collection covers Asian and international art, architecture, design and moving image from the 20th century onwards, including a large group of contemporary Chinese works, and the free ground-floor spaces and roof garden are worth a stop even if you skip the paid galleries. The Hong Kong Palace Museum, opened in 2022 a few minutes’ walk along the promenade, shows imperial paintings, ceramics, bronzes and court objects lent by the Palace Museum in Beijing, in rotating exhibitions. Timed tickets for its special shows can sell out at weekends, so book online.

Both are a 10 to 15-minute walk from Kowloon MTR station, or reachable on foot from the Tsim Sha Tsui side via the harbourfront park. Allow at least three hours each.

The Hong Kong Museum of Art reopened in 2019 after a long renovation with a glass extension facing the harbour. Its collections of Chinese painting and calligraphy, ceramics, export art and historical pictures of the old China trade are rotated through themed galleries. It sits beside the Hong Kong Cultural Centre and the Space Museum, whose dome holds a planetarium with paid sky shows.

A short walk east in Tsim Sha Tsui East, the Science Museum has hands-on galleries and big set pieces, and is the best museum in the city for children. Next door, the Museum of History reopened its main permanent exhibition, the Hong Kong Story, in April 2026 after a renovation of nearly five years.

Tai Kwun, the former Central Police Station, magistracy and Victoria Prison on Hollywood Road, is a restored compound of colonial buildings with free heritage displays in the old cells, a contemporary art gallery and courtyard restaurants. Up the hill, Flagstaff House in Hong Kong Park is the oldest Western-style building in Hong Kong and now the free Museum of Tea Ware.

At Central Pier 8, the Hong Kong Maritime Museum tells the story of the harbour, from junks and pirates to container ships, with ship models and a cafe facing the water. In the Mid-Levels, the Museum of Medical Sciences occupies an Edwardian brick bacteriology institute, and the Police Museum at Wan Chai Gap covers triads and the old opium trade. The University Museum and Art Gallery at HKU has a fine collection of Chinese bronzes and ceramics.

The Museum of the War of Resistance and Coastal Defence at Lei Yue Mun, near Shau Kei Wan MTR, fills a 19th-century British fort, with tunnels, gun emplacements and a historical trail on the hillside above the harbour entrance.

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum in Sha Tin is the largest museum in the city, with galleries on Cantonese opera, New Territories life and a Bruce Lee exhibition that was scheduled to run until 2026, so check it is still on. It is a short walk from Che Kung Temple MTR station. Further north in Tai Po, the free Hong Kong Railway Museum is the old Tai Po Market station of 1913, with vintage carriages and locomotives on the tracks outside.

Two folk museums show how people lived before the towers. Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan is an 18th-century walled Hakka village of three rows of houses, five minutes from Tsuen Wan MTR, and Sheung Yiu Folk Museum is a fortified Hakka hamlet next to an old lime kiln on the Pak Tam Chung nature trail in Sai Kung. Law Uk in Chai Wan is a small Hakka house, and the Lei Cheng Uk Han Tomb Museum in Sham Shui Po lets you look into a brick tomb nearly 2,000 years old.

The government museums, run by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, open roughly 10am to 6pm, later on some days, and each closes one weekday, usually Tuesday or Thursday, so check before you go. Most of their permanent galleries are free or cost a few dollars, with charges for special exhibitions, planetarium shows and the larger museums. M+ and the Palace Museum charge for most galleries, and timed online tickets save queuing.

Photography without flash is allowed in most permanent galleries but often banned in loan exhibitions. Bags larger than a small backpack may have to go in lockers. All the big museums are near MTR stations and air-conditioned, which is why they fill up on rainy weekends. They close when typhoon signal 8 or a black rainstorm warning is raised. For combining museums with sightseeing, see the itineraries guide.