6 Best Sights in Singapore

The first mosque on this site was built in the early 1820s with a S$3,000 grant from the East India Company. The current structure, built in 1928 by Denis Santry of Swan & Maclaren—the architect who designed the Victoria Memorial Hall—is a dramatic building with golden domes and minarets that glisten in the sun. The walls of the vast prayer hall are adorned with green and gold mosaic tiles on which passages from the Koran are written in Arabic. The main dome has an odd architectural feature: hundreds of bottle ends are jammed in between the dome and base. This unusual feature originated as a way for lower-income Muslims to donate during the mosque's construction so that all could contribute. Five times a day—at dawn, 12:30, 4, sunset, and 8:15—the sound of the muezzin, or crier, calls the faithful to prayer. At midday on Friday, the Islamic Sabbath, Muslims from all over Singapore enter through one of the Sultan Mosque's 14 portals to recite the Koran. During Ramadan, the month of fasting, the nearby streets, especially Bussorah, and the square in front of mosque are lined with hundreds of stalls selling curries, cakes, and candy; at dusk Muslims break their day's fast in this square. Non-Muslims, too, come to enjoy the rich array of Muslim foods and the festive atmosphere. The best view of the Sultan Mosque is at the junction of Bussorah Street and Beach Road. Walk-ins are welcome Saturday through Thursday from 10 am to 12 pm and from 2 pm to 4 pm. 

This mosque was completed in 1910 and has recently been restored. Though it has none of the exotic, multicolor statuary of the Hindu temples, it still woos you with its intricately detailed Moorish facade in the Muslim colors of green and gold and its unusual architectural symmetry. Shorts are not allowed, and remember to take off your shoes. Only worshipers should enter the prayer hall, and visitors should avoid evening prayer sessions and Fridays.

Standing on a busy road in Chinatown, this ornate mosque was once just a thatched hut, built in 1827 as one of Singapore's first mosques for Indian Muslims. Also known as Kuchu Palli (Tamil for "mosque hut"), the existing structure dates from 1855. Though much of the mosque's original ornamentation has been replaced, its original timber panels and fanlight windows have remained. You can visit during the week except on a Friday lunchtime, when devotees flock in for the midday prayers.

In 1845, Hajjah Fatimah, a wealthy Muslim woman married to a Bugis trader, commissioned a British architect to build this mosque (hajjah is the title given to a woman who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca). The minaret is reputedly modeled on the spire of the original St. Andrew's Church in the Civic District, but it leans at a six-degree angle. No one knows whether this was intentional or accidental, and engineers brought in to see if the minaret could be straightened have walked away shaking their heads. This relatively small mosque (and gazetted national monument) is an intimate oasis amid all the bustle. It's extremely relaxing to enter the prayer hall (remember to take your shoes off), sit in the shade of its dome, and admire the 12 lancet windows with yellow and green stained glass. French contractors and Malay artisans rebuilt the mosque in the 1930s. Hajjah Fatimah and her daughter and son-in-law are buried in an enclosure behind the mosque.

Popularly called Masjid Chulia, this simple, almost austere mosque was built in 1826 by Chulia Muslims from India's Coromandel Coast, on its southeast shore. So long as it's not prayer time and the doors are open, you're welcome to step inside for a look. Note that you must be dressed conservatively and take your shoes off before entering.