Sri Mariamman Temple
Singapore's oldest Hindu temple, built Dravidian-style in Chinatown's core eight years after the colony itself began.
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Naraina Pillai — a Penang clerk who stepped off the boat with Raffles in May 1819, then built Singapore's first construction company — founded this agamic temple in 1827. The British assigned the South Bridge Road plot in 1823 after two earlier sites fell through. It is now a gazetted National Monument and still an active place of worship for Tamil Hindu Singaporeans.
What to look for
- The Dravidian-style exterior — an agamic temple tradition transplanted directly from South India to equatorial Singapore
- The South Bridge Road address in Chinatown, the very area the 1822 Jackson Plan set aside for the Indian community
- The National Monument designation, marking it as the city's oldest surviving Hindu place of worship
244 South Bridge Road, Chinatown; managed by the Hindu Endowments Board, a statutory body under Singapore's Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports.
Sri Mariamman Temple is one of 30 sights worth the detour in Singapore, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Singapore pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Singapore
- Singapore Botanic GardensThe world's only tropical UNESCO garden — where 1920s rubber supplied half the planet's latex and orchids now carry diplomats' names.
- Marina Bay SandsA 150-metre infinity pool balanced on the world's largest public cantilevered platform, jutting 66.5 metres past the edge of its own tower.
- Marina Bay Street CircuitLewis Hamilton said this 4.927 km loop was twice as physically punishing as Monaco — and you can walk every metre of it.
- Marina BayThe entire bay you're standing beside was open sea until 1992 — 38 years of reclamation drained the anchorage and pushed the Singapore River's mouth inland.
- Gardens by the BayThe world's largest glass greenhouse anchors a 105-hectare park on Singapore's Marina Reservoir.
- Singapore FlyerFor six years this was the tallest Ferris wheel on earth — Las Vegas finally beat it in 2014, by just 2.6 metres.