Haw Par Villa, Singapore’s free public park built around a sprawling collection of statues depicting Chinese mythology, began a partial closure on December 8, 2025. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB), which has managed the park since 2001, announced the closure for structural maintenance and repair work, timed to the end of operator Journeys Pte Ltd’s decade-long management contract (2015-2025). No reopening date for the full park has been announced.
A Private Garden Built by the Tiger Balm Brothers
The park dates to 1937, when Tiger Balm ointment tycoons Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par built it as a private family estate and garden. Over the decades it grew to hold more than 1,000 statues and 150 dioramas illustrating Chinese mythology and moral fables, surviving the Japanese occupation before eventually passing to the state and opening to the public for free under STB’s management.
The Ten Courts of Hell
The park’s most notorious feature is the Ten Courts of Hell, a walk-through sequence of graphically gory tableaux — disembowelment, boiling in oil, being sawed in half — depicting the punishments traditional Chinese folk religion assigns to sinners in the afterlife. It’s a startling contrast to the park’s otherwise whimsical mythological statuary, and the reason Haw Par Villa has built a cult following among visitors looking for something stranger than the usual Singapore itinerary.
What’s Still Open
Hell’s Museum, the indoor exhibit space that houses the Ten Courts of Hell displays, is staying open under a separate associate operator while STB works out the park’s longer-term future. It’s the outdoor statue garden and the rest of the main park that are affected by the closure. If Haw Par Villa was on your Singapore itinerary, check STB’s advisory before planning a visit, since access is currently limited to the parts that remain open.
Haw Par Villa sits in the same southwestern stretch of Singapore as the Southern Ridges walking trail and the Mount Faber Cable Car, both still fully open if you want to fill the gap in your plans, and it’s a short ride from HarbourFront and VivoCity.