Putrajaya

Putrajaya was begun in the mid-1990s on former plantation land to take the government machinery out of a congested Kuala Lumpur, and it is one of the few genuinely large planned capitals built anywhere in recent decades - a federal territory of wide boulevards, a man-made lake, formal gardens and a set of ministry buildings in a deliberately Islamic-modern idiom, arranged along a central axis. The set pieces are the pink Putra Mosque, the domed Perdana Putra above it, the steel Iron Mosque, the Seri Wawasan and Putra bridges, the wetlands park and the botanical garden. Whether it works as a city is argued about: it is spacious and clean, and also famously empty outside office hours, hard to walk in the heat and built entirely around cars. Lake cruises and cycling are the usual ways to see it.

History

The site was first the Prang Besar rubber estate, established in 1921 and grown from 800 to 8,000 acres. Construction of the new administrative capital began in August 1995, and it is named after Malaysia's first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj, from the Sanskrit putra, "prince" or "son", and jaya, "victory" (Wikipedia, Putrajaya).

The main sights

• A planned government city - boulevards, ministries and a central axis from scratch.
• Two landmark mosques - the pink Putra and the steel Iron Mosque.
• Sculptural bridges - Seri Wawasan and Putra crossing the man-made lake.
• Gardens and wetlands - the botanical garden and the constructed wetland park.

When to go

All year; weekends for lake activities, weekdays to see it working. A day.

Things to know

It is spread out and hostile to walking in the heat - plan transport. Outside office hours it can feel deserted. The architecture is monumental and impresses some visitors and leaves others cold.

Nearby

Cyberjaya adjoins; Kuala Lumpur and the airport are both about half an hour.

Key facts