The Jiangbei district on the north bank of the Yong River was Ningbo's foreign concession area from 1844 and preserves a compact cluster of late nineteenth and early twentieth century commercial buildings — a customs house, trading firms, warehouses, and the residences of foreign merchants. The neighbourhood is Ningbo's equivalent of Shanghai's Bund but on a more human scale, and the streets behind the main riverfront have a layer of subsequent Chinese commercial development that gives the area more texture than a purely colonial preservation exercise.
Several buildings in Jiangbei have been converted into restaurants and bars, and the neighbourhood has a young, creative energy on weekend evenings. The combination of the riverside promenade (best in the evening with the old buildings lit up), the adjacent Art Museum, and the lanes of old commercial architecture makes Jiangbei worth at least an evening visit. The Catholic church in the district, built in 1872, is the most architecturally prominent building in the neighbourhood.