What is French Concession known for?
Between 1849 and 1943, a wedge of central Shanghai operated under French municipal law, and the physical imprint of that century-long occupation remains strikingly intact along the district's canopied boulevards. Where the International Settlement to the north favored imposing granite banks and trading houses, the French quarter developed a more intimate grain: narrow lanes lined with London plane trees, low-rise art deco apartment blocks with wrought-iron balconies, brick-and-stucco villas tucked behind garden walls, and Catholic churches whose steeples still punctuate the skyline. Today, the former concession - centered roughly on the Xuhui and former Luwan districts - has become Shanghai's cultural heartland. Independent bookshops, vinyl record stores, third-wave coffee roasters, and galleries occupy the ground floors of buildings whose upper stories house some of the city's most coveted residential addresses. Walking its streets feels less like touring a museum and more like inhabiting a living neighborhood that happens to wear its past on its sleeve. From the western reaches of the concession, it's a short taxi ride east to The Bund, where Shanghai's colonial history takes on a grander, more mercantile scale, or a glance upward to spot Shanghai Tower twisting above the Pudong skyline across the river.