Merdeka Square Layover: Colonial Kuala Lumpur
Part of the full Kuala Lumpur in One Day: The Twin Towers
Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur is a flat green field with four buildings facing it: a domed government block, a free textile museum, a mock-Tudor members’ club and an 1894 church, all within five minutes of the grass.
Merdeka Square was a cricket pitch until 1987
The field is a padang, the open green every colonial Malayan town was laid out around, and this one belonged to the Royal Selangor Club, whose members played cricket on it for a century. The government took it over in 1987, turned it into a public square and named it for independence. A 95-metre flagpole stands at the southern end, on the spot where the Union flag came down and the Malayan flag went up just before midnight on 31 August 1957.
Facing it across Jalan Raja is the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, finished in 1897 with copper onion domes along a brick arcade and a 41-metre clock tower in the middle. It holds government offices and does not admit sightseers, so the square is where you look at it from. If you would rather cover this quarter and the rest of the centre without working out which line goes where, a 24-hour sightseeing bus pass from a tours and activities platform stops on the square and runs a loop through most of what the city puts on a postcard.
The National Textile Museum sits in a 1905 railway headquarters
On the corner of Jalan Sultan Hishamuddin, a two-storey building in banded pink and white brick with horseshoe arches and a white onion dome was put up in 1905 by Arthur Benison Hubback as the headquarters of the Federated Malay States Railways. It then passed through the public works department, the water department, the central bank and the High Court before anyone thought to make it a museum, which happened in 2010.
Four galleries inside run through songket weaving, batik, beadwork and the trade routes that brought Indian and Chinese cloth into the peninsula, with looms set up and a room of ceremonial dress. It is free, it opens daily from nine in the morning, and an hour is generous. It is also the only air-conditioned building on the square that anyone can simply walk into.
The Royal Selangor Club has been shut to non-members since 1884
The long black-and-white timbered frontage down the western side of Merdeka Square is a private club, founded in 1884 by the colony’s British residents and rebuilt in 1910 to another Hubback design after the original timber building was outgrown. Members still call it the Spotted Dog, a nickname nobody has satisfactorily explained: one account traces it to a London pub, another to a pair of Dalmatians a founder’s wife left tied at the door.
None of it is open to visitors, which is worth knowing before you walk over to try. What the club gives the square is the second half of its geometry: Moorish domes and arcades on one side, Tudor gables on the other, facing each other across the grass that was the whole point of both.
St Mary’s Cathedral keeps an organ built by the maker of St Paul’s
At the northern end of Merdeka Square, behind a screen of trees, a white church under a deep red tiled roof was begun in February 1894 and consecrated a year later, and was described at the time as the first brick church built in the Malay States. It is small, plain and Gothic in outline, and it still runs as an Anglican parish rather than a monument.
The thing inside worth the detour is the organ: a Henry Willis instrument from 1898, bought secondhand, by the builder of the organs in St Paul’s Cathedral and the Royal Albert Hall. It is free to walk in outside services. What the whole quarter lacks is cover: the square, the flagpole end and the walk to the cathedral are open ground with no arcade to duck under, and Kuala Lumpur’s afternoon storms arrive in minutes, which is a poor combination with a suitcase and a laptop bag.
Masjid Jamek station is the nearest way back to the airport train
The station at the river confluence a few minutes east of the square sits on the line that runs south to KL Sentral, which is where the KLIA Ekspres leaves from: 28 minutes non-stop to Terminal 1 of Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL), RM55 for an adult, departures every 20 minutes and the last one at midnight. Reckon on an hour and a half from the grass to the terminal door, before anything your airline wants on top.
That short hop is the reason this square works as a stand-alone stop on a three-hour gap. With more time, the full Kuala Lumpur route carries on east to the Petronas Twin Towers and out to the Lake Gardens, neither of which fits alongside this one.
There is a storage point on the square itself, which is the useful thing about starting here: the bag goes down before the first building and comes back on the way to the station.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do during a layover near Merdeka Square in Kuala Lumpur?
Stand on the field first, because the whole quarter was built facing it: the Sultan Abdul Samad Building's arcade and clock tower on one side, the mock-Tudor Royal Selangor Club on the other, and a 95-metre flagpole at the southern end marking where the Malayan flag went up in 1957. Then take the National Textile Museum on the corner, which is free and sits in A. B. Hubback's 1905 railway headquarters, and St Mary's Cathedral at the north end, consecrated in 1895 and holding an 1898 Henry Willis organ. Three hours covers all of it on foot. Nothing here is ticketed, so there is nothing to book and nothing that sells out.
Can you go inside the Sultan Abdul Samad Building or the Royal Selangor Club?
Neither, as a rule. The Sultan Abdul Samad Building holds government offices and is not open for sightseeing, so the arcade and the clock tower are seen from the square. The Royal Selangor Club has been a private members' club since 1884 and stays one; the long black-and-white frontage across the grass is the whole of the visit. What is open is the National Textile Museum across the road, free, and St Mary's Cathedral at the top of the field.
Is Merdeka Square worth it with a large group?
It is the easiest stop in the city for one. Everything here is open ground or free entry, so a group of twelve costs what one person costs and nothing needs booking or timed entry. The field has no gate and no capacity limit, the textile museum charges nothing, and the cathedral takes walk-ins. The only constraint is shade, which the square has almost none of, so a group moving slowly should work the covered arcades on the edges rather than the middle of the grass.
How do I get from Merdeka Square to the rest of the city?
Masjid Jamek station is a few minutes' walk east at the river confluence and puts you on the line that runs south to KL Sentral and east towards the twin towers. Pasar Seni, at the top of Chinatown, is a similar distance south and sits on both that line and the metro. Neither walk is covered, which in the middle of the afternoon is the argument for picking whichever one your next stop actually needs rather than the nearer one.