singaporecity360° The Cenotaph
The Cenotaph stands in Esplanade Park along Connaught Drive, a granite war memorial to the men from Singapore and the Straits Settlements who died in the two World Wars.
It is open ground with no gate, no ticket and no fixed hours, so you can walk up to it at any time and there is nothing to book. Completed in 1922 and modelled on the Cenotaph in London, it carries on bronze plates the names of 124 men who fell in the First World War; the reverse side, added after 1945, reads "They died that we might live" in all four of Singapore's official languages. Most people spend only a few minutes here, reading the inscriptions before moving on.
It shares this narrow strip of park with two other monuments, the Lim Bo Seng Memorial and the Tan Kim Seng Fountain, both a short walk along the same path. City Hall MRT is the nearest station: leave via the St Andrew's Road exit toward the Padang, then cut down to the waterfront at Connaught Drive, roughly an eight-minute walk that also takes you past the former Supreme Court and the cricket club.
The Cenotaph is one of three separately gazetted national monuments crammed into this one small park, so it is worth reading it alongside the nearby Lim Bo Seng Memorial and the ornate Tan Kim Seng Fountain rather than treating it as a standalone stop. The detail most visitors walk past is the WWII inscription on the rear face, which repeats "They died that we might live" in Malay, Chinese, Tamil and English.
Rain, heat, and what to do about it
Live readings and forecasts from NEA. Four days is the limit — past that, nobody is forecasting, they are showing you an average.
Southwest Monsoon
June to September
Short, sharp early-morning showers and occasional squall lines. Drier overall than the northeast wet phase.
The other good window. Rain tends to arrive early and clear, leaving usable afternoons. This is also when haze can occur, which is worth checking rather than assuming.
Plan your The Cenotaph stop
Straight-line distance from the three places a visitor has already heard of.
1.0km
north-west
2.9km
south-east
16km
south-west
The Cenotaph, in every light
Nearby, on foot
In Civic District — close enough to collect on the same trip out.
Contains information from Tourist Attractions accessed on 2026-08-01 from data.gov.sg, made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0.