George Town

Francis Light took formal possession of Penang Island on 11 August 1786 and founded George Town as a free port for the British East India Company. Fort Cornwallis was raised on the site where the first settlers landed, and the town quickly drew traders and labourers from across the region.

Over the following century separate quarters formed around places of worship and trades, giving the town its mix of Chinese clan houses, Indian Muslim and Hindu neighbourhoods, Malay settlements and European administrative buildings. In 2008 UNESCO inscribed George Town together with Melaka as the Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca, recognising the two towns as living records of some five centuries of trade and cultural exchange between East and West, with George Town representing the British era from the late 18th century.

George Town is a working city rather than an open-air museum. Families still run hardware stores, goldsmiths and coffee shops from the ground floors of their shophouses, temples and mosques fill up for prayers and festivals, and the rhythm of the day shifts from morning markets to late-night hawker trade. Festivals of every community are celebrated in the same streets, and many residents switch easily between Hokkien, Malay, Tamil and English.