Fort Canning Park has been many things to many people, and almost none of them would recognise the others.

The Malay name for this hill was Bukit Larangan, the Forbidden Hill, a sacred burial ground for Singapore's 14th-century royalty. The British, who arrived in 1819 and built a fort here, were apparently unconcerned. The fort was never used in battle, but it hosted the British surrender to the Japanese in World War II, the largest surrender of British-led forces in history.

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British colonial administrator who founded modern Singapore, planted Singapore's first botanical garden on the hill in 1822. The Gothic gates at its foot, dating from 1846, were designed by a colonial engineer whose other constructions mostly fell down.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours layer the hill's history from its Malay sultanate origins through colonial rule and wartime surrender, connecting the Archaeological Dig, the Spice Garden and the Gothic Gates into a single continuous story.