Singapore

A city-state where a colonial free port grew into one of the plural cities of the world, its Chinese, Malay, Indian and Eurasian quarters still standing block by block. The layers survive if you walk them: the Civic District around the mouth of the river, where Stamford Raffles landed in eighteen nineteen and where an empire later surrendered and a republic was proclaimed; Marina Bay, the deliberate skyline of towers and supertrees raised on land the city made from the sea; Chinatown, where the immigrant city landed and built its temples of thanksgiving on the old shoreline; Kampong Glam, the royal Malay quarter around the golden dome of the Sultan Mosque; and Little India, the most living of the old quarters, loud with gold, garlands and spice along Serangoon Road. Read the small island that became a country within a single lifetime, from the founding river to the supertrees, at your own pace.