George Town travel guide

Top 10 sights in George Town

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

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   1© Arne Müseler · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

   Kek Lok Si

   The largest temple in Malaysia, begun in 1890 on a hillside above George Town and still growing. Its seven-tier pagoda of 1930 changes style as it rises — Chinese at the base, Thai in the middle, Burmese at the crown — and a bronze Kuan Yin stands above it.

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   2© Mohammed Al-Naser · CC BY 2.0

   Kapitan Keling Mosque

   A mosque built from 1801 by Indian Muslim traders on land the East India Company granted them, and named after the headman of their community. Its onion domes and minaret mark the corner of the street that carries its name.

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   3© Balou46 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Penang State Mosque

   The state mosque of Penang, finished in 1980 in a deliberately modern idiom — plain geometry, a shallow dome and a single tapering minaret rather than the Moorish forms used earlier.

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   4© HundenvonPenang · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Batu Ferringhi

   Penang's main beach strip, 11 km northwest of George Town, where high-rise hotels line some 4 km of sand. Parasailing boats work the bay, a night market fills the roadside after dark, and on clear days Mount Jerai rises across the water in Kedah.

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   5© Khalzuri Yazid from Petaling Jaya, Malaysia · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Snake Temple

   A Chinese temple of 1850 on the road to the airport, properly the Temple of the Azure Cloud, where pit vipers rest on the altars and in the frangipani outside. Local belief holds that the incense keeps them docile.

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   6© Asiadetailfeed · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Penang National Park

   The smallest national park in Malaysia, gazetted in 2003 across twelve hundred hectares at the northwest tip of the island. It holds a meromictic lake that forms only part of the year, and a beach where green turtles nest.

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   7© Gryffindor · CC BY 2.5

   Jubilee Clock Tower

   A clock tower given to George Town in 1897 for Queen Victoria's diamond jubilee, built sixty feet high for the sixty years of her reign. Bombing in the war left it with a slight lean that has never been corrected.

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   8© Sin-siōng · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Sri Mahamariamman Temple, Penang

   The oldest Hindu temple in Penang, built in 1833 and topped by a gate tower crowded with painted deities. The Thaipusam chariot procession sets out from here each year.

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   9© Sheba_Also 43,000 photos · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Penang Floating Mosque

   A mosque built on piles over the sea at Tanjung Bungah, so that at high tide it appears to float. It was raised in the 2000s for a fishing community whose earlier prayer hall the shoreline had taken.

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    10© Gryffindor · CC BY 2.5

    Fort Cornwallis

    The largest standing fort in Malaysia, built from 1786 where Francis Light came ashore and claimed the island for the East India Company. Its walls are star-shaped and its guns, including a Dutch bronze piece, never fired in a battle.

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   Khoo Kongsi

   The largest Hokkien clan house in Malaysia, rebuilt in 1906 after fire took the roof of the first — local account says the building had been made too grand and the gods objected. Its hall is carved and gilded to the last centimetre.

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   2© Vnonymous · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Pinang Peranakan Mansion

   The green mansion of a nineteenth-century Chinese tin magnate, now a museum of Peranakan life with several thousand objects. The long dining table, the beadwork and the imported tiles show what the hybrid culture spent its money on.

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   3© CEphoto, Uwe Aranas · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Wat Chayamangkalaram

   A Thai Buddhist temple founded in 1845 on land given by the colonial government, and the oldest in Penang. Its reclining Buddha runs thirty-three metres, among the largest in Malaysia, and the Songkran and Loy Krathong festivals centre on it.

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   4© Vnonymous · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Gurney Wharf

   A seafront park along Gurney Drive built on reclaimed land, its first phase opened in 2024. Twenty-four hectares hold a beach, coastal woodland and water gardens where a sea wall used to be.

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   Kong Hock Keong Temple

   The oldest Chinese temple in Penang, built in 1800 and dedicated to Kuan Yin, and founded jointly by the Hokkien and Cantonese communities — an unusual arrangement that made it the island's shared temple.

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   Penang Botanic Gardens

   A botanical garden laid out in 1884 in a disused granite quarry by its first superintendent, and known as the waterfall gardens after the cascade above it. Long-tailed macaques patrol it and are not to be fed.

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   7© williamnyk · CC BY 2.0

   St. Anne's Church, Bukit Mertajam

   A minor basilica in Bukit Mertajam whose feast of St Anne, ten days ending on 26 July, draws well over 100,000 pilgrims from across Malaysia and beyond. The old church of 1888 still stands beside the larger one opened in 2002 to hold the crowds.

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   8© Chongkian · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Sun Yat-sen Museum Penang

   The house on Armenian Street that Sun Yat-sen used as his southeast Asian base, where he planned the 1911 Canton uprising and ran a newspaper. It is kept as a museum of the revolution's overseas Chinese funding.

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   St. George's Church

   An Anglican church of 1818 built with convict labour, and the oldest purpose-built Anglican church in Southeast Asia. Its Greek Revival portico and memorial to Francis Light stand in a walled compound in the middle of town.

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    10© Will Ellis from Reading, England · CC BY 2.0

    Church of the Assumption

    A Catholic church in George Town in Penang in Malaysia. It was established soon after George Town was founded in 1786, which makes it the third oldest in Malaysia, and it was the cathedral of the diocese of Penang from 1955 to 2003.

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