Kuala Lumpur Highlights - Putrajaya

Putrajaya is a planned city located 25km south of Kuala Lumpur. It is also about 20km from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), at Sepang in the south. Putrajaya is sort of a like a second capital city near Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur.

It is to be the new Administrative capital of the government, a model garden city with lush greenery, botanic gardens spread across the landscape, with lakes and wetlands. The idea of Putrajaya was said to be conceived by Dr. Mahathir Bin Mohamad, Malaysia's 4th Prime Minster.

Images of Putrajaya Malaysia.

The architecture flavour of the buildings is Islamic, modelled from countries like Morocco and Turkmenistan. The primary tourist attraction of the place, where you'll find many buses parked, is the Putra Mosque at Putrajaya Lake, on its left and on its right, just a short distance from the Prime Minster's office, Perdana Putra.

Letting my fingers do the walking, the following are some particulars about the Putra Mosque.

The mosque consists of a 116 meter tall minaret and one of the striking features of the minaret is that it was designed after the Sheikh Oman Mosque in Baghdad.

Its five-tiers represent the five pillars of Islam and its five call to prayers. Within its premises is the VIP Room Gallery, the Al-Quran Manuscript Museum, a library, auditorium and exhibition hall as well as a seminar room. It also has a large courtyard called the “Sahn” dedicated to commemorate the life of the Prophet. Worshippers can also congregate at the sahn in front of the prayer hall. The main entrance to the mosque is patterned after the gates of Persia.

The prayer hall can accommodate 10,000 with another 5,000 at the courtyard.

Visitors are welcome to view the inside of the mosque, but will be required to wear a pink coloured overall as you can see from the photo above.

The mosque is located next to a lake. Walking along the Putrajaya Walk, see photo on the right, with a cool breeze blowing but still keeping in the shades, overlooking the view of lake and the Seri Wawasan Bridge, it does have a peaceful feel of the place.

However, I can imagine the place to be busy, vibrant and noisy come Friday prayer time, with the thousands of people visiting the many eateries and shops along the Putrajaya Walk.

Below are photos of the Seri Wawasan Bridge. The first from the Putrajaya Walk while the second was taken from the Shangri-La Hotel Putrajaya.

In the centre of the city are the government buildings where most of the Federal Government ministries, departments and agencies are found, like the Minstry of Finance and the "Palace of Justice'. The buildings are separted from each other by large boulevard. Even the stones on the road are coloured with interesting designed lampposts.

At one end there's the office of the Prime Minister and at the other end is the Putrajaya International Convention Center (PICC). This is a beautiful designed building for international conventions. The local name for the convention centre is "The Cowboy Hat". Sorry, no photos of it for the ones I got are of poor quality, another way of saying blur photos.

Outside the centre you'll find the houses, apartments and small townships of the people, who work for the Government.