Hong Kong Museum of the War of Resistance and Coastal Defence

Built by the British in 1887 to guard the eastern approach to Victoria Harbour, this fort above the Lei Yue Mun channel is the only museum on this list where the building is also the main artefact. The Redoubt, the fort's original core structure, still anchors the site, and the 34,200-square-metre grounds are laid out as three connected areas: a modern reception building, the historic Redoubt itself, and a Historical Trail that threads through the fortifications on the slope below. The military hardware is real rather than reproduction. Central Battery holds a 7-inch RML Mark 1 gun dating to the 1870s, one of the older pieces of coastal artillery preserved in Hong Kong. The Western Battery displays a twelve-tonne gun barrel recovered in 1990, decades after the original weapons were removed. A Brennan Torpedo station, built between 1892 and 1894, once housed one of the earliest guided-missile systems in the world, using wire-guided torpedoes to defend the harbour mouth before conventional coastal guns took over the role, and the separate Lei Yue Mun Pass Battery, completed in 1892, sits further along the Historical Trail. The permanent exhibition, The Story of Hong Kong Coastal Defence, traces six centuries of military history at the site, from Ming dynasty coastal patrols through the Opium Wars to the Battle of Hong Kong in December 1941. Following the museum's September 2024 renaming, a new gallery was added covering the War of Resistance against Japan, developed in partnership with mainland Chinese cultural institutions, which broadens the collection beyond purely colonial-era defence into the wider regional conflict. Free guided tours run on Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays for visitors who want the history explained on site rather than from the exhibition panels alone, and the walk between batteries doubles as one of the better harbour viewpoints on Hong Kong Island.