Haw Par Villa
In the First Court of Hell at Haw Par Villa, people who mistreated their parents are crushed under stone slabs, and in the Sixth, people who killed domestic animals in excess are cut open in what a National Museum of Singapore caption calls the chamber of vivisection. Aw Boon Haw, who sold Tiger Balm with his brother Aw Boon Par, opened the garden on Pasir Panjang Road in 1937 and added the Ten Courts after World War II. Since December 8, 2025, the outdoor park has been partly closed for repairs, and the Ten Courts are seen inside the ticketed Hell's Museum.
Field Guide Entry
Aw Boon Haw and Aw Boon Par were born in Rangoon, Burma, now Yangon. Boon Par ran production of Tiger Balm and Boon Haw packaged and marketed it, and by 1918, in the National Museum of Singapore's account, the Aw family had become the richest family in Rangoon. In 1932, Boon Haw built a villa in Hong Kong for his second wife, with a garden behind it meant to be seen from the roof like a Chinese landscape painting. He hired craftsmen from Swatow, China, for their knowledge of Chinese folklore. The same craftsmen then went to Singapore.
Tiger and leopard
The brothers bought the land on Pasir Panjang Road in 1935, and the villa was finished in 1937. Its Chinese name, 虎豹别墅, means Tiger Leopard Villa, after the brothers: Boon Haw is 文虎 and Boon Par is 文豹. Boon Haw built the house for his younger brother. The National Heritage Board names the architect as Ho Kwang Yew, and other accounts spell it Ho Kwong Yew. The villa was private, but part of the garden was opened to the public because, in the National Museum's words, "Boon Haw wanted it to be an advertisement for Tiger Balm products."
According to SG101, a government heritage site, the Japanese bombed the Art Deco villa during World War II and it was demolished after the war. The Heritage Board's record says the war badly damaged the compound and the garden survived. Boon Par died in 1944. Jeya Ayadurai, chairman of Journeys, the company that later ran the park, said in 2021 that Boon Haw "wanted to commemorate his brother's life and developed some of the best-known dioramas during the post-war years." The Heritage Board lists the Courts of Hell and scenes from Journey to the West among the postwar additions.
Boon Haw died in 1954. His nephew Aw Cheng Chye kept building. The Singapore Mandarin Database, a government reference, says he added statues of sumo wrestlers and Thai dancers, and the Heritage Board describes "International Corners" for the countries he had visited. After Cheng Chye died in 1971, the family stopped changing the garden. SG101 counts about 1,000 statues and 150 dioramas.
The Ten Courts
In the Chinese belief the dioramas illustrate, ten courts judge a soul's past deeds before its reincarnation is decided. The National Museum of Singapore holds postcards of the courts dated to the 1950s through the 1970s, and its captions describe them. In the First Court, those who mistreated their parents and parents-in-law are punished by "bone-crushing slabs of stones." The Third Court, presided over by King Songdi, has a grilling pillar. In the Fourth, a man is punished for drowning himself in a river, ending his life before his time and abandoning his family. The Sixth Court holds the chamber of vivisection, where those who killed domestic animals in excess get "a taste of their own medicine." In the Eighth, a slave trafficker is punished for his crimes.
Dragon World
The government took over the garden in 1985, under the Land Acquisition Act according to the Mandarin Database. Some accounts give 1979. In 1986, the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board leased the park to International Theme Parks, which reopened it in 1990 as Haw Par Villa Dragon World, with boat rides, theaters, and special effects. The main new ride was a boat trip into the belly of a 60-meter green and orange dragon, with the Ten Courts inside. The ride closed after a 1995 revamp that aimed to return the exhibits to their original versions. In 2001, by SG101's account, Dragon World ceased operations, the dragon was removed, and the grounds became a free public park.
The Straits Times places the park's peak in the 1970s and 1980s, when it drew a million visitors a year.
Hell's Museum
In 2015, the Singapore Tourism Board contracted Journeys to run the park. It closed for upgrading in October 2020 and reopened on July 1, 2021, with the Ten Courts now fully air-conditioned. On October 28, 2021, Journeys launched Hell's Museum, a 3,800-square-meter complex that it calls the world's first museum on death and the afterlife. Its galleries hold replicas of altars, a burial crypt, a void deck funeral, and a traditional Chinese grave, and they lead into the Ten Courts.
On November 18, 2025, the tourism board announced that the park would be partly closed from December 8 for maintenance and repairs, "until further notice," and that Hell's Museum would stay open. The closure coincided with the end of Journeys' contract on December 7. The board said it was "engaging key stakeholders to review the future plans for Haw Par Villa." The museum is run by Haw Par Villa Pte Ltd, a company that Journeys and Singapore History Consultants set up in 2021. No reopening date for the rest of the park had been announced by October 2026.
Visiting Information
Hell's Museum, which includes the Ten Courts of Hell, is open daily from 10am to 6pm, with last entry at 5pm. In October 2026, tickets were S$22 for adults and S$12 for children aged 7 to 12, and children 6 and under enter free. Tickets are sold online through GlobalTix and exchanged at the Visitor Center, and they are non-refundable. Singaporeans 18 and over can pay with SG Culture Pass credits through Pelago. The museum puts a visit at 2 to 4 hours.
The museum does not recommend a visit for children under 9, because the Ten Courts contain what it calls "sensitive and explicit scenes," and it advises parental guidance for that age.
Free highlight tours for ticket holders start at 10:30am, 12:15pm, 1:30pm, 2:45pm, and 4:15pm, with first-come registration at the lobby counter. Photographs are welcome, but recording the tours, the museum's videos, or close-ups of its storyboards is not allowed. Part of the route is open to the weather, and the museum suggests an umbrella. Food, drinks, and pets are not allowed.
Haw Ror Villa 5, the museum's Halloween event, runs on selected nights between October 8 and November 15, 2026, from 6:30pm to midnight. On event nights, last daytime admission is at 3pm, and the museum closes to day visitors on a number of other dates in October and November, so its calendar is worth checking before a visit.
Parts of the outdoor sculpture park have been closed since December 8, 2025, so it's worth checking the Haw Par Villa site before planning around the statues outside the museum. Haw Par Villa station on the Circle Line (CC25) is about a minute's walk from the entrance. Parking is at ORTO, 27 West Coast Highway.
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