Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur is the capital of Malaysia, on the west side of the Malay Peninsula where the Gombak and Klang rivers meet. In Malay the name means muddy confluence, after that meeting of the two rivers.

The Petronas Twin Towers, designed by the architect César Pelli and finished in the late 1990s, rise to 452 m (1,483 ft) and are joined by a skybridge. Masjid Jamek, a mosque designed by the British architect Arthur Benison Hubback in a Mughal-inspired style, stands on the point of land where the two rivers join. The Sultan Abdul Samad Building, with copper domes and a clock tower, faces the square where the British flag was lowered at independence. Petaling Street, at the heart of the old Chinese quarter, holds a covered night market. The Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia shows Qurans, ceramics and textiles from China to the Middle East.

Raja Abdullah, a Selangor prince, sent Chinese miners up the Klang River in 1857 to open tin mines near the confluence. Yap Ah Loy, the Kapitan Cina of the Chinese community, ran the mining town through its early decades. Frank Swettenham moved the Selangor state capital here in the 1880s, and after a fire and floods he required new buildings of brick and tile. Kuala Lumpur was capital of the Federated Malay States from the 1890s, independence was proclaimed in a stadium in the city in 1957, and it became a federal territory in the 1970s.

Royal Selangor, a pewter company started by the Chinese craftsman Yong Koon, casts tankards and tableware at its workshop in the north of the city, using tin like that which built the town. YTL Corporation, based in Kuala Lumpur, makes cement and builds and runs power plants in Malaysia and abroad.