Sultan Abu Bakar had his palace along the river front, just as the present Sultan of Johor, but presumably in quite a different architectual stlye.
Just as in Johor Bahru, the Sultan’s palace, the main ferry terminus and pier, the police station and the Courts of Law were all placed in close proximity. Sultan Abu Bakar is commemorated in the Sultan Abu Bakar Building (1921) shown at the top of this page. This building houses the administrative office of the District of Muar.
At the side of this building you can see its vantage point on the river. Near here is a row of ex-containers used a temporary offices, one of which contains the official Muar Tourism Information Centre.
In front of the Sultan Abu Bakar Building is a notice board provided by James Teo and the Muar Historia group. This notice board provides a brief history of the building and QR-codes for you to access websites for further information. It is to be hoped that more of this type of signage appears around the streets of Muar so that visitors are better able to understand the this historic city.
Across the road you can see the newly renovated Muar Syariah Court building. When you see how lovely these restored buildings are, one hopes that more will be done to restore the more lowly heritage buildings in Muar, in addition to the State buildings.
The current blue and white Police Station, surrounded by barbed wire, was once the post office. You can still see the weigh bridge at the side of the building from when cargoes would have been weighed (and presumably taxed) coming to/from the Muar River.
Click here to return to Muar - the Queen’s Town
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