Marina Bay is Singapore's answer to the question of what a twenty-first-century waterfront should look like — a ring of reclaimed land around a freshwater reservoir, built almost entirely since 2005, that has become the city's signature image. The three towers of Marina Bay Sands, topped by their cantilevered SkyPark, and the supertree grove of Gardens by the Bay form a skyline that did not exist a generation ago.
The bay is best understood as a loop walk. Starting from the Merlion at one end, the waterfront promenade curves past the Esplanade theatres — their spiky shells nicknamed "the durian" — to the Helix Bridge and across to Marina Bay Sands. Behind the hotel, Gardens by the Bay spreads its conservatories and illuminated supertrees over land reclaimed from the sea; the Cloud Forest and Flower Dome conservatories are among the most visited attractions in the country. The ArtScience Museum, shaped like a lotus, sits at the water's edge.
This is a district built for spectacle. The nightly Spectra light-and-water show plays off the bay in front of Marina Bay Sands, the supertrees light up after dark, and the whole loop is at its best in the early evening when the towers turn gold and then switch on. It is the least organic part of Singapore — there is nothing old here at all — but it is the place the city chose to show the world.