KL City Gallery

This guide to KL City Gallery in Kuala Lumpur is anchored in the Sultan Abdul Samad Building itself, completed in 1897 to house British colonial offices in a style borrowing from North African mosques and Mughal palaces. It follows the building through sixty years as the seat of a foreign administration, up to the midnight of August 30, 1957, when its clock tower watched a flag come down and another rise. Historians have a nickname for the style: blood and bandages, for its red brick walls and white plaster trim.