Temples in Singapore: Chinatown and Little India on Foot

1. How the temples in Singapore are laid out

The oldest temples in Singapore stand in the city centre, in the neighbourhoods where each community first settled after 1819. Hokkien sailors gave thanks to the sea goddess on the Telok Ayer shore. Tamil clerks and labourers built shrines along South Bridge Road and later Serangoon Road. The Malay royal household had its mosque at Kampong Glam.

That history makes the city easy to read on foot. Give Chinatown a full morning and Little India the late afternoon, when the Hindu temples reopen and the evening puja draws a crowd. If you have a second day, add Kampong Glam and the Murugan temple on Tank Road.

The Chinatown visitor listings show Thian Hock Keng, Sri Mariamman and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple as free to enter. All of these sites ask for modest dress, and the Hindu temples and the mosque ask you to leave your shoes outside, so plan your clothes before you plan your route.

2. Thian Hock Keng, the sailors' temple

Start early at Thian Hock Keng on Telok Ayer Street, a few minutes on foot from Telok Ayer MRT. It opens at 7.30am and closes at 5.30pm daily, according to the Chinatown visitor listing. Come early, before the midday heat.

The temple once faced the sea. Telok Ayer Street was the shoreline before land reclamation, and early Chinese immigrants landed here and gave thanks to Mazu, Goddess of the Seas, at a small shrine on the beach. The present temple was built between 1839 and 1842 with materials shipped from China and carvings by craftsmen from Fujian. Mazu's statue arrived from China and was enshrined in 1840 after a grand procession.

The Hokkien Huay Kuan, the clan association of Singapore's Hokkien community, was founded inside the compound in 1840. A careful restoration from 1998 to 2000 earned an honourable mention in the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards of 2001. Thian Hock Keng is a national monument. Among the Taoist temples in Singapore, it is the one to see first if you want to understand how Chinese popular religion is practised here.

3. Sri Mariamman and the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple

From Thian Hock Keng, walk a few hundred metres inland to South Bridge Road. Sri Mariamman Temple at number 244 is the oldest Hindu temple in Singapore, and you will see its five-tier gopuram, crowded with painted figures, well before you reach the gate.

Its founder was Naraina Pillai, a government clerk from Penang who came with Raffles on his second visit in 1819. A wood and attap shrine stood on the site by 1827. The oldest parts of the present brick temple date from about 1843, and the five-tier gopuram replaced an older three-tier tower in 1925.

The goddess Mariamman is prayed to for rain and for protection from epidemics such as cholera, and the shrines also honour Draupadi, Rama, Ganesha and Aravan. The temple was gazetted as a national monument on 6 July 1973.

The temple closes in the middle of the day. The Chinatown listing gives 5.30am to noon and 4.30pm to 9pm, but other listings differ, so check before you go. Leave your shoes on the racks outside the gopuram and walk clockwise round the inner shrines.

Further along the same road, at number 288, is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. It opened on Vesak Day, 31 May 2007, to house a relic venerated as a tooth of the Buddha, and its design draws on the Buddhist mandala and Tang dynasty architecture. It is the youngest building on this walk. Chinatown and Maxwell MRT stations are both close by.

The temple's own visitor notes rule out bare backs, off-shoulder tops, shorts and mini-skirts, and non-vegetarian food is not allowed inside. The Chinatown listing gives 9am to 5pm daily, but published hours vary from source to source, so check the temple website on the day.

4. Little India: Kali and Vishnu on Serangoon Road

Take the MRT to Little India station and walk up Serangoon Road. The two great Hindu temples in Singapore's Indian quarter stand on the same street, and the walk between them passes flower garland stalls and gold jewellers.

Sri Veeramakaliamman Temple at 141 Serangoon Road is dedicated to Kali in her fierce form, the destroyer of evil. Tamil workers at the Kampong Kapor lime pits are believed to have set up a shrine here as early as 1855, and its first Tamil name meant the temple in the village of lime. Bengali labourers built a temple on the site in 1881. During the Japanese Occupation it sheltered and fed more than 20 homeless people each night.

Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, at 397 Serangoon Road, is dedicated to Vishnu. A shrine to Narasimha stood here from 1855, on land bought in 1851, and the temple was rebuilt with Srinivasa Perumal as its main deity in 1966. Its gopuram has five tiers. Like Sri Mariamman, both are at their liveliest in the early morning and after dusk.

If you can only see one of the Indian temples in Singapore at puja time, choose Sri Veeramakaliamman at dusk. The bells, the camphor flame and the press of families after work give a truer picture of temple life than any midday visit.

Take the MRT to Little India station and walk up Serangoon Road.

5. Sultan Mosque and the Murugan temple on Tank Road

Kampong Glam lies a short walk south east of Little India. The Sultan Mosque at 3 Muscat Street stands on land set aside in 1824 for a royal mosque beside the Sultan's palace. The present building, with its two golden domes, was designed by the Irish architect Denis Santry of Swan & Maclaren and completed in 1932. Look at the base of each dome for a ring of glass bottles, donated by poor worshippers.

The mosque's own visitor page sets walk-in hours of 10am to noon and 2pm to 4pm, Saturday to Thursday. It is closed to visitors on Friday. Robes are lent at the counter on a first come, first served basis, and visitors may not enter the main or second floor prayer halls unless a mosque official goes with them. Photography without flash is allowed, but video needs approval.

For Murugan devotees, the essential stop is Sri Thendayuthapani Temple at 15 Tank Road, near Fort Canning MRT. The Nattukottai Chettiars, a merchant banking community from the Chettinad region of Tamil Nadu, founded it in 1859, and Murugan is their clan deity. It is a national monument. The Thaipusam procession ends here.

6. Thaipusam and Theemithi: when the streets fill

Two festivals tie these temples together. At Thaipusam, devotees walk from Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple to Sri Thendayuthapani Temple carrying milk pots and kavadis. In 2026 the festival fell on 1 February, and the 3.2 km procession began at about 11.20pm the night before. More than 19,000 devotees carried milk pots, a record, and 349 bore kavadis.

Tamil calendars place Thaipusam 2027 on Friday, 22 January. Watch the Hindu Endowments Board for confirmed times, and note that devotee registration for the 2026 festival opened online on 10 December 2025. The pavements along Serangoon Road are packed through the night, so arrive early and give the kavadi bearers room.

Theemithi, the firewalking festival, belongs to Sri Mariamman Temple and honours Draupadi. It falls in October or November. A procession of about 4 km comes down from Sri Srinivasa Perumal Temple, and male devotees then walk barefoot across about three metres of burning coals before stepping into a pit of milk. If you are in Singapore in those months, ask the temple office for the exact date.

7. Dress, shoes and photographs

Cover your shoulders and knees at every site. A light scarf and long trousers or a long skirt will get you into all of them. The Sultan Mosque asks for more: sleeved tops and long trousers for men, long sleeves and ankle length skirts or trousers for women.

Shoes come off at the door of every Hindu temple and the mosque. Wear sandals you can slip off and on, because on this walk you will do it a dozen times.

Photography is generally tolerated in courtyards, but never photograph worshippers at prayer without asking, and keep your camera down at the inner shrines. Each temple sets its own rules, so read the notice at the gate. Our guide to sacred site etiquette covers the wider rules.

31° North can fold these temples into a longer Southeast Asian pilgrimage that continues to Batu Caves, timed for Thaipusam if you want to see the procession.

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