Shanghai Municipal Archive was first built on December 31, 1959 on Xianxia Road and on April 23, 2004 its Bund location was opened to the public at No. 9 Zhongshan Dong'er Road. Today it is a base for patriotism education with more than 2.4 million volumes of archives in stock revealing the city history.

In the archive building, pictures and files vividly explain how Shanghai developed from a small fishing village into a metropolitan city.

The new location on the Bund was the former premises of the Messageries Maritimes Building, which was built from 1937 to 1939. It was later renamed to “Pujiang Building”. At the permanent exhibition Memories of A City - Exhibition of Historic Development Archives of Shanghai in Modern Times, you will see more than 600 pieces of archives fully presented to visitors the development course of the city in the past nearly 200 years.

For Michael Rosenthal, the most favourate picture is the one which shows that after the issuance of the “Shanghai Commuinique”, Premier Zhou Enlai and U.S. President Richard Nixon raise glasses in celebration at Jin Jiang Hall, Shanghai.

“This is the most important one. Our relations started here. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, there were tremendous cooperations between the two countries. When countries have a better understanding of each other, they start doing commons together and they are more tied to their futures, which means that reducing chance of having conflicts.”