[UPDATED] Dozens of Shanghai museums are free from this weekend

Yesterday we sent a message regarding museums and parks across the city going free or cut-price for Shanghai Science Week. Unfortunately, we've subsequently been informed that the museums and parks are only offering free and cut-price entry on specific dates throughout the week; we've updated this post to include the dates below. Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Dozens of Shanghai's most prominent museums and parks are offering free or reduced entry on certain dates from Saturday 14-Saturday 21 May for Shanghai Science Week. 

Here are six of the best:

Shanghai Animation Museum

Free - Wednesday 18

Tucked away in a little corner of Pudong’s Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, the Shanghai Animation and Comics Museum, may be a little bit out of the way, but the three-storey museum, packed with children’s cartoon heroes, plenty of kid-friendly activities, a 3D movie theatre, and a wide selection of Shanghai’s own animation history, is sure to keep families entertained all afternoon.

Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Centre

15RMB (half price) - Wednesday 18-Thursday 19

Met by an ostentatious gilded monument of Shanghai’s skyscrapers as you enter the lobby, there should be no doubt that this museum is dedicated entirely to Shanghai’s modernisation and urban development. Yet despite the slightly pompous first impression, the Urban Planning Exhibition Centre is far from pretentious and one of the most interactive museums in the city.

Spread across five floors, with one temporary exhibition space that changes every three to four months, the museum presents Shanghai’s urban renewal through architectural scale models, old photographs, multimedia and interactive games. Although the exhibitions here can be a bit dry at times, the immense scale model on the third floor portraying central Shanghai (almost) in its entirety is worth a visit alone. 

Shanghai Museum of Glass

Free - Wednesday 18

The Shanghai Museum of Glass is one of Shanghai's most impressive public institutions. The exhibitions of ancient and contemporary glassworks on display include some stunning specimens, but it's the building itself that has made it one of our favourite museums in town. 

Set in a huge former glass-making factory, the museum's interior is like a cross between a house of mirrors and David Bowie's lair in Labyrinth. Walking through the museum's numerous rooms feels disorientatingly like you're inside on of the artistic glass objects that it displays. 

Shanghai Film Museum

30RMB (half price) - Wednesday 18

For most of the 20th century Shanghai was the cradle of the Chinese film industry and this museum stands as testament to that history. Spread over four floors, the museum contains 3,000 artifacts, multimedia installations, a 4D cinema, working production studios and a café.

Important events in the history of Shanghai cinema as well as the major players – actors, actresses and directors – are showcased through interactive panels (in English and Chinese) and video clips (with English subtitles). It took Shanghai Film Group, the investor, five years to build, and cost around 1 billion RMB - and it shows.

Shanghai Natural History Museum

15RMB (half price) - Sunday 15

Imagine, if after loading them up two by two on to the ark under the pretext of divinity-decreed conservation, Noah had instead brutally massacred every single species of animal with a machine gun, shipped them off to a taxidermist and then stuck them all in a huge building for people to look at. Then you may get a sense of the sheer volume of stuffed creatures populating Shanghai's hugely impressive Natural History Museum.

The word to describe the Natural History Museum is ‘comprehensive’, and you’re advised by the museum (and us) to put aside at least four hours of your day in order to absorb everything. There's a 4D movie theatre, an outdoor exhibit garden, and numerous exhibit spaces taking you right through from the Big Bang to a lifelike recreation of a busy African savannah to scale models of early Chinese agricultural communities.

Century Park

5RMB (half price) - Sunday 15

If you'd rather spend the weekend out and about in greenery, then you can take advantage of Century Park offering half price entry for the next week. One of the city's largest green spaces, Century Park has ample grassy lawns for lounging and picnic-ing on, pleasant waterways and, at this time of year, colourful flowers beds and landscaped gardens.

Find full details by clicking 'Read more' at the bottom of this message.