Royal Museum

The building went up in 1928 as the home of Chan Wing, a Chinese tin miner who had made a fortune in Selangor; it was taken over during the Japanese occupation, bought by the Selangor state government afterwards, and from 1957 served as the Istana Negara, the residence of the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the elected king. When a new and much larger palace opened in Jalan Duta in 2011 the old one was converted into the Royal Museum and opened to the public, which means you can now walk through rooms that were closed for half a century - the throne room, the banquet hall, the royal bedrooms, the audience chambers, all left substantially furnished. The gilt-and-yellow decor is heavy and the interest is precisely in seeing how the institution presented itself.

What you actually see

• The former royal residence - the palace used by the king from 1957 to 2011.
• Furnished state rooms - throne room, banquet hall and audience chambers.
• Royal private quarters - bedrooms and sitting rooms left largely as they were.
• A 1928 tin fortune - the mansion Chan Wing built, before it was a palace.

When to go

All year; weekday mornings are quietest. Two hours.

Honest expectations

Photography is restricted in parts and dress code is enforced. It is out of the centre with no station nearby. The presentation is dated in places and captions are thin in English.

Nearby

The new Istana Negara is at Jalan Duta; central Kuala Lumpur is a short drive north.