Walking the former French Concession in Shanghai

The former French Concession is the part of Shanghai that visitors fall for without quite planning to. It is not a single monument or a ticketed attraction; it is a district of plane-tree avenues, low brick villas, art-deco apartment blocks and shikumen lanes, laid out between the 1900s and the 1940s and still lived in. The pleasure of it is a long walk that keeps turning corners into quiet, and this route strings the best of those corners together in one unhurried day.

It is a real walk rather than a concept. You will cover roughly eight to nine kilometres on foot over five to six hours if you take the whole thing slowly, with coffee stops, a wet market, two parks and one preserved writer's house along the way. Every leg below starts at a named metro station and can be cut short if the weather or your legs decide the day is finished.

What the French Concession actually is

Shanghai grew around foreign concessions, areas leased to foreign powers and administered by them, and the French Concession, on the western side of the old city, was the French-administered one. What survives today is a street pattern and a building stock: the grid of avenues, the plane trees planted along them, and a mix of garden villas, apartment blocks and lane houses built for a prosperous, cosmopolitan population.

The plane trees, the platanus that arch over Wukang Road and Fuxing West Road, are the signature of the district, and they close the sky over whole streets, keeping the light soft even at midday. Between the villas sit the shikumen, the stone-gate lane houses of Shanghai: tight rows of low houses behind decorated stone doorways, organised around narrow alleys where washing hangs between the walls. Look up as well as ahead, because the art-deco apartment blocks, with their curved corners and stepped facades, are the district's other great pleasure.

The route at a glance

The stages add up to a comfortable day, running roughly west to east. If you only have half a day, do stages one, two and three and take a taxi to Tianzifang.

Stage 1: Wukang Road and the Normandie Apartments

Start at Shanghai Library station and walk a few minutes to the top of Wukang Road, the street that has become the symbol of the district. The road curves gently downhill under its plane trees, and the star of the show is the Normandie Apartments at the fork where Wukang Road meets Huaihai Middle Road: a 1924 building shaped like a flat iron, its wedge nose pointing at the junction and its two wings sweeping away along each street.

Walk round it properly. The best view is from across the road on the pointed side, where the building reads as a ship's prow splitting the traffic. From there, walk south along Wukang Road past villas and small cafes, then loop back along the parallel streets, which are quieter and full of ordinary street life. Allow forty-five minutes at an easy pace, longer if you stop for coffee.

Stage 2: Anfu Road, Wuyuan Road and the plane trees

From the Normandie Apartments, walk north-west to Anfu Road, a short, calm street that has become one of the district's most pleasant stretches of small boutiques and cafes. The point of this leg is the connective tissue around it: the lanes and side streets between Anfu Road and Wuyuan Road, where the crowd thins and the buildings get lower.

Wuyuan Road runs parallel and is quieter still, with a mix of old apartment blocks and small shops. This is the stretch for noticing architecture rather than ticking off names: the curved balconies, the decorative ironwork, the tiled facades and the deep entrances of the older blocks.

• Walk Anfu Road from end to end; it is short and worth the full length.
• Turn into the side lanes between Anfu and Wuyuan roads for the quiet version.
• Look up for curved balconies, ironwork railings and tiled facades.
• Do not walk into private shikumen alleys; a look from the gate is enough.
• This is the best coffee stretch of the route, so take a break here.

Stage 3: Wulumuqi Road market and Fuxing West Road

Head south to the Wulumuqi Road wet market, a covered everyday food market that is one of the most honest places to see in the district. This is where residents still shop for vegetables, fruit, fish and tofu, and it is a welcome break from the cafes: prices are low and the fruit is excellent.

From the market, turn east onto Fuxing West Road, the grandest of the plane-tree avenues. It is wide, long and straight, lined with villas set back behind walls and gates, and it carries the sense of the district's wealthiest era. The walk along it is one of the great simple pleasures of Shanghai: the trees meet overhead and the traffic is busy but distant behind the trunks. Thirty to forty minutes with a market stop in the middle is about right.

Stage 4: Hengshan Road, Fuxing Park and the mansions

Continue east to Hengshan Road, another tree-lined avenue with a livelier, more commercial edge, and use it to reach Fuxing Park, the green heart of the district. The park is a former French garden, laid out with formal beds, fountains and gravel paths, and it is a wonderful window onto Shanghai life: older residents dancing in the mornings, card games in the afternoon, and couples strolling in the evening.

The park is free to enter and worth an hour on its own, but do not simply cross it and leave. Walk its perimeter as well, because the streets around it hold some of the finest surviving villas and the district's grandest garden houses, several of them behind high walls with only the rooflines and the old trees visible above. This is also where the walk slows down most naturally: find a bench, watch the dancing, and let the afternoon pass.

Stage 5: Sinan Mansions, Ba Jin's home and Tianzifang

East of Fuxing Park, Sinan Mansions is a restored cluster of garden villas turned into a small, quiet enclave of cafes, galleries and gardens. It is the most polished stop on the route, but the architecture is good and the courtyards are peaceful. Nearby stands the Former Residence of Ba Jin, the house of one of modern China's best-known writers, preserved with his furniture, books and study largely as they were. It is a modest, moving stop, and one of the few places on the walk where you step inside somebody's life rather than simply past their wall.

From there, walk east and you will eventually reach Tianzifang, the famous network of shikumen alleys converted into craft shops, galleries, cafes and small studios. Be honest about it: Tianzifang is busy, commercial and heavily visited, especially at weekends, and it is the opposite of the quiet lanes you began the day in. Even so, it is worth seeing once, and it makes a natural end to the walk because it sits beside a metro station and a long list of places to eat.

Coffee, snacks and what a day here costs

This district is one of the best places in Shanghai to eat and drink cheaply and well, and the range runs from a bowl of noodles at a lane stall to a specialty coffee at a restored villa. Prices below are typical and should be read as ranges.

Photo spots, the best hour and the Monday problem

The best photographs on this walk come from two things: the light under the plane trees and the geometry of the buildings. The Normandie Apartments from the front are the single most photographed sight on the route, and the flat-iron point is best shot earlier in the day, when the sun catches the wedge face. Fuxing West Road is at its best when the trees are backlit, in the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset, when the light comes through the leaves in bands.

The best hours for the whole walk are early morning for the parks and the market, and late afternoon for the avenues. Spring and autumn are far kinder to both the walker and the camera than a summer midday. The Monday problem is real and catches many visitors: several of the district's museum houses, including the Former Residence of Ba Jin, close on Mondays, as do most museums in Shanghai. Check opening days before you set out, and if your only free day is a Monday, walk the route anyway and let the streets fill the gap. Weekdays are also noticeably quieter than weekends, particularly at Tianzifang.

• Normandie Apartments: shoot the flat-iron point from the far side of the junction.
• Fuxing West Road: backlit plane trees in the first and last hour of daylight.
• Fuxing Park: morning dancing and card games make the most human pictures.
• Museum houses and most city museums close on Mondays; build the day around the streets instead.
• Weekdays are quieter than weekends, especially at Tianzifang.

Linking the walk to Huaihai Road and Xintiandi

The route sits neatly between two of Shanghai's best-known shopping and dining streets, and both make easy extensions. Huaihai Middle Road runs along the southern side of the district: a long avenue of shops and department stores, it is a short walk from the Normandie Apartments and a sensible place to end the first half of the day if you want modern Shanghai rather than old villas.

Xintiandi, in the east, is a restored block of shikumen rebuilt for dining and nightlife, beside the metro station of the same name. It is polished, expensive and popular, and it links naturally to the end of the route around Tianzifang and Sinan Mansions. If you finish the walk in the late afternoon, Xintiandi is a good place for dinner, and the small streets between the two are full of quieter local restaurants. The JoyoTour group's advisers often slot this walk into a longer Shanghai stay alongside the Bund and the old town, so the day connects to the rest of the itinerary.

Walking this district well is mostly a matter of slowing down and letting the streets set the pace. ChinaTour.es arranges this walk with a licensed English-speaking guide who grew up in the neighbourhood, and can add the wet market, a tea house and a home visit where the family is paid directly for their time.