Built by the Tiger Balm brothers in 1937, Haw Par Villa lines its paths with painted figures from Chinese legend and keeps Singapore's most gruesome dioramas.
In 1937 Aw Boon Haw built a villa and garden here for his brother Aw Boon Par; the pair had made a fortune with the pain-relieving ointment known as Tiger Balm. The Japanese occupied the villa during the war and it was later vandalised, but the 8.5-hectare garden of sculptures survived. The Singapore Tourism Board took over in 1988 and ran it for about a decade as a paid theme park, Haw Par Villa Dragon World.
Today the park describes itself as Singapore's oldest theme park and the last Asian cultural park of its kind in the world. Its famous dioramas of the Ten Courts of Hell sit inside Hell's Museum, opened on 28 October 2021, which sets them beside the ways cultures across the world have imagined the afterlife. The sins and punishments are shown in vivid, sometimes explicit, detail, and the museum does not recommend them for children under nine.
Parts of the park have been closed for maintenance since 8 December 2025, until further notice. Come on a weekday morning, before the heat, and ride the Circle Line on to Kent Ridge for a walk on the Southern Ridges.
