Muzium Negara — the whole country in four galleries, and the right first stop if you know nothing about Malaysia.
Muzium Negara opened in 1963, on the site of the Selangor Museum that had been destroyed by an Allied bomb in 1945 — an air raid aimed at the railway marshalling yards next door.
It is the place to start if you arrive in Malaysia knowing nothing about it, which is most visitors.
The building
A modern structure using a Minangkabau-style roof — the upswept, saddle-backed form from West Sumatra that is also used in Negeri Sembilan — with two large mosaic murals on the front elevation showing scenes from Malaysian history and culture, made in Italian glass.
The four galleries
Chronological, and they do the job.
Gallery A — Early History. Prehistory, the Perak Man skeleton (around 11,000 years old), Neolithic and Bronze Age material, and the early Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of the peninsula. Bujang Valley in Kedah, one of the oldest archaeological sites in Southeast Asia, is covered here.
Gallery B — The Malay Kingdoms. The Melaka Sultanate from about 1400 — the trading state that made this coast matter, and the point at which Islam took hold in the archipelago. Then the Portuguese in 1511, the Dutch in 1641.
Gallery C — The Colonial Era. The British, the Straits Settlements, tin and rubber, the enormous immigration from China and India that made Malaysia the plural society it is, and the administrative machinery that produced modern Kuala Lumpur.
Gallery D — Malaysia Today. The Japanese occupation, the Emergency, Merdeka in 1957, the formation of Malaysia in 1963, and the decades since.
The honest view
It is a national museum in a country with a contested national story, and it reads like one.
The account of the colonial period, the Emergency and the years after independence is the official version. The 13 May 1969 riots, the New Economic Policy and the politics of race are handled briefly and carefully. Malaysian visitors know this and will say so.
That does not make it a bad museum. It makes it a museum whose framing is itself worth noticing, and it is a far better introduction to the country than arriving without one.
Outside
Traditional houses and a historic transport collection in the grounds, including tin-mining equipment and an old locomotive.
The Orang Asli Crafts Museum nearby covers the indigenous peoples of the peninsula and is small, separate and worth twenty minutes.
Practical
Modest admission. Foreign and Malaysian rates differ.
Five minutes from KL Sentral on a covered pedestrian link, which in this climate is a genuine selling point.
Two hours. Combine with the Islamic Arts Museum and the Lake Gardens, all within walking distance.
More Museums
Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia
The best museum in Kuala Lumpur by a distance, and one of the best of its kind anywhere.
National Textile Museum
Songket, batik and the kain in a striped Moorish-revival building of 1905, and it costs almost nothing.
Ilham Gallery
Free contemporary Malaysian art in a Foster tower, and the most serious exhibition programme in the country.