The Bund

Brief Information

The word “Waitan” means “outer bank,” and this name explains the place well: what you see is not a single building, but a long line of street, piers, and facades along the Huangpu. The section lies within the boundaries of the former International Settlement; across the river is the new business district of Pudong. That is why the Bund reads as a shoreline cross-section of old financial Shanghai against the backdrop of the opposite bank.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a construction boom made this waterfront the main financial center of East Asia. The buildings along the river housed banks, trading companies, and consulates of various countries. This former meaning is not hidden in dates: it is visible in the dense European-style development that stands parallel to the water and turns an ordinary stretch of street into a row of former prestigious addresses.

What to Notice First

It is worth comparing the line of the embankment itself with the buildings along it: the Bund is described not only as a street, but also as buildings, piers, and adjacent areas, so the place functions as a unified waterfront front. In the facades, you can look for a mixture of styles — classicism, Gothic, neoclassicism, Baroque, Beaux-Arts, and Art Deco; this makes it easier to understand why the area is called a “museum of world architecture.”

Among the individual landmarks, three different traces of the Bund’s former role are important. The Peace Hotel is connected with the former Cathay Hotel and Victor Sassoon’s private apartments on the top floor. The HSBC Building was a banking headquarters and is now occupied by the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank. At the Shanghai Customs House, it is worth noticing the clock and its chimes: they were made in Great Britain as an imitation of Big Ben, and this detail directly links the local facade with an external model of authority and precise timekeeping.