The skeleton of a 15th-century Chinese sailing ship, lined with ceramic vessels, greets you as you step into the main hall inside this gleaming building at Kota Batu, 5km east of the city centre. On display are some of the 13,261 artefacts excavated from the country's most important shipwreck, discovered by divers in 1997.

　　Items exhibited in the well-presented shipwreck gallery include crude singburi (stoneware jars) and fine Ming ceramics from China, and porcelain from Vietnam and Thailand, which would have been traded in Brunei for local products, including spices, rattan, sago and camphor.