上海自然博物馆

The Shanghai Natural History Museum, a branch of the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum, stands at 510 Beijing West Road in Jing'an District, inside Jing'an Sculpture Park. The new building opened on 18 April 2015 and began selling public tickets the following day. Its lineage reaches back to the Xujiahui Museum founded by the French priest Pierre Heude in 1868 and the 1874 Shanghai Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society; the museum itself was established in 1956 and merged into the science and technology museum in 2001. Designed by Perkins&Will with the Tongji Architectural Design Institute, the building takes the nautilus shell as its form and is known locally as the Green Snail. It offers 45,257 sq m of floor area and 32,200 sq m of exhibition and education space, representing an investment of 1.3 billion yuan. Permanent galleries such as Origins of the Universe, Pageant of Life, Path of Evolution and Treasures of the Earth trace natural history from the Big Bang to the present, supported by temporary galleries, a 4D cinema, an exploration centre and two theatres. The collection exceeds 310,000 objects, and a 24-metre fin whale skeleton was installed in 2021. The green roof connects to Natural History Museum station on line 13, with Xinzha Road on line 1 and Nanjing West Road on line 2 also nearby.