About Merdeka Square
Today it looks like one huge lawn, but it used to be the Padang, the Royal Selangor Club's cricket field and a meeting point for the colonial elite. At midnight as August 31, 1957 began, the British flag came down and the flag of independent Malaya went up right here. A round black marble plaque marks the spot, near a 95-meter flagpole, and the square still hosts the annual independence parade.
Across the street stands the Sultan Abdul Samad Building, which housed the colonial government offices in 1897. In the Indo-Saracenic, or neo-Mughal, style, it looks like it left Mughal India and stopped by mistake in front of an English cricket field.
