Islamic Arts Museum

World-class Islamic art collection across 12 galleries in the Lake Gardens, with Quranic manuscripts and calligraphy

One of the great museums of Southeast Asia and the largest collection of Islamic art anywhere in the region. The collection spans more than a millennium of Islamic civilisation — illuminated Qurans, intricately glazed Iznik tiles, Mughal jewelled daggers, Ottoman armour, and scale models of the world's great mosques — laid out in a low-rise modern building with five turquoise domes inspired by Uzbek and Persian architecture.

The architecture and lighting are as carefully done as the displays themselves. Reckon on at least two hours, longer if you are interested. There is an excellent gift shop and a Lebanese restaurant in the basement that is itself worth a visit. The museum is on the western edge of the Lake Gardens, a short walk from the National Mosque. Open 9.30 am to 6 pm daily.

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The museum's twelve galleries are arranged not by date but by medium — calligraphy, ceramics, metalwork, jewellery, textiles — which lets you trace how the same visual ideas travelled from Cordoba to Isfahan to Java without being lost in the chronology of any one empire.