Avenue of Stars

What it is

The Avenue of Stars is a 440-metre waterfront promenade on the Tsim Sha Tsui shore of Victoria Harbour, built as a tribute to the Hong Kong film industry and laid out as a walk rather than as a building. It opened to the public on 28 April 2004, the day after its opening ceremony, funded by a HK$40 million investment from the New World Group and modelled loosely on Hollywood's Walk of Fame: celebrity names, handprints and autographs set along a harbour path. The land belongs to the Leisure and Cultural Services Department while day-to-day operation sits with AOS Management (HK) Limited, which is why a government site is run by a private company. In 2015 the whole promenade closed for a three-year redevelopment, and it reopened on 31 January 2019 to a scheme by the New York practice James Corner Field Operations working with other international and local designers. That rebuild moved the handprints off the pavement and into the timber handrails, added planting, shade and considerably more seating, and reworked the promenade into somewhere to sit rather than a corridor to file along. What a visitor comes for, then and now, is the view south across the water to the Hong Kong Island skyline.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What's inside

The film content is on the handrails. The operator's own list of handprints runs from number 1, Lai Man Wai, to number 115, and the plaques are set into the wooden rail at hand height rather than underfoot, so they can be read while walking. Each carries a QR code, and scanning it brings up that star's biography and selected film clips on a phone. The names cross the whole century of Hong Kong cinema, with Bruce Lee at 53, Jackie Chan at 59, Chow Yun Fat at 64, Anita Mui at 69, Tony Leung Chiu Wai at 70 and Wong Kar Wai at 72; many of the earliest are name plaques with no handprint. Four statues punctuate the walk: the Hong Kong Film Awards statuette, Bruce Lee, Anita Mui and McDull, the Hong Kong cartoon pig. The Bruce Lee and Anita Mui statues carry flowing-water features and are the two the operator's augmented-reality feature is built around. The rest is landscape. Arbour is a shade structure four metres high weighing 25 tonnes; the paving is patterned to cut glare and its bricks contain glass from recycled bottles; the balustrades are made from rice husks bound with salt and mineral oil to survive the salt air. There is also a wave generator, the central lawn at Salisbury Garden, and a line of food and retail kiosks with a gift shop and customer service counter at the centre.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

How long to spend

Allow about 45 minutes. The promenade is 440 metres end to end, which is a seven-minute walk if a visitor simply walks it, so the time goes on the things that stop them: reading handrail plaques, waiting a moment at the Bruce Lee and Anita Mui statues, and standing at the rail for the skyline. Forty-five minutes covers the walk out, the four statues, a fair number of handprints and a set of photographs, and it is the figure this site's planner uses. That number is editorial judgement rather than an operator figure, because the operator publishes no suggested visit length. Two things stretch it. If the visit is timed for the eight o'clock light show, add at least half an hour, because a place at the rail has to be taken before the show starts and the crowd takes a while to clear afterwards. If a visitor intends to sit, and since 2019 there is far more seating than there was, the promenade absorbs an hour without effort. It can also be much shorter. Someone passing through on the way from East Tsim Sha Tsui station to the Star Ferry can take in the statues and a slice of the handrail in fifteen minutes without feeling short-changed, because nothing here sits behind a door that has to be entered first.

Checked 2026-08-26

Season and crowds

The fixed point in the day is A Symphony of Lights, staged every night at 8:00pm, and the operator names the Avenue of Stars as one of its vantage points. Seen from here the fish-scale cladding inside the balustrade lights along the length of the promenade during the show, while searchlights, lasers and LED screens work across the buildings on both shores. Plan around that hour: arrive well before eight if the show is the point of the visit, or deliberately after nine if it is not, because the rail thins out quickly once the music stops. The show is suspended when Tropical Cyclone Warning Signal No. 3 or above, or the Red or Black Rainstorm Warning Signal, is issued at or after 3:00 p.m. on the day, and it does not run even if that signal is lowered before eight; it can also be suspended in an emergency with no notice at all. The same weather takes the kiosks and mobile carts down, so a wet afternoon leaves a visitor with the walk and nothing to buy. Otherwise the most useful stretch is the hour before sunset, when the skyline across the water is lit from the side rather than flatly and the light show follows on. Hong Kong summers are hot and humid and the promenade is exposed; the shade structures help but do not make an August midday comfortable.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Tickets

The operator publishes no admission charge for the Avenue of Stars, and publishes no opening hours either. That absence is worth stating plainly rather than filling in from somewhere else. The pages that would carry such values, About AOS, Contact Us and FAQ, Transportation, Kiosk and Stalls and the Terms of Use, were read in both English and Traditional Chinese on 26 August 2026 and carry neither a price nor a closing time. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department's own park listings hold no entry for the Avenue of Stars, and the OpenStreetMap relation for it carries no opening-hours tag. So this guide records no ticket price and no closing time, rather than repeating a figure that travel sites copy from one another. What does cost money is what is sold along it. The promenade carries a row of kiosks and mobile carts selling coffee, ice cream, souvenirs and currency exchange, along with phone charging, a water taxi and a sightseeing bus desk, plus the Avenue of Stars gift shop, which doubles as the customer service counter. Government Wi-Fi is free: connect to the Wi-Fi.HK network and log in. Venue, kiosk and stall rental is handled by the operator by email, and any commercial filming or media interview needs prior permission from both the LCSD and AOS Management (HK) Limited.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Getting there

East Tsim Sha Tsui station is the closest rail access and the operator names Exit J specifically, a few minutes' walk from the promenade. That exit puts a visitor onto Salisbury Road at the Kowloon end, and the Avenue runs east from Salisbury Garden along the water. Tsim Sha Tsui station on the Tsuen Wan line joins the same complex by an underground walkway, so either name works at a ticket machine. The better arrival is by water: take the ferry from Central or Wan Chai to Tsim Sha Tsui and walk east along the Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade to the Avenue, a short walk that passes the Clock Tower and the Cultural Centre and gives up the skyline gradually rather than all at once. Buses stopping near Salisbury Garden, East Tsim Sha Tsui station, the Hong Kong Cultural Centre or the Star Ferry pier all serve it; the operator lists more than forty routes, among them the 5, 8, 9, 12, 26, 28 and 973, the E21X, and night routes N41X, N216 and N271. Do not drive. The operator states that there are no public parking facilities at the Avenue of Stars and points drivers to the nearest paid parking, at K11 MUSEA next door. A car is not needed for any part of this visit.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

What to watch out for

The rules here are posted and they are enforced. Smoking is prohibited across the whole promenade. Fishing is not allowed. Climbing, cycling, skateboarding and flying drones are all prohibited, which matters because a harbour view of this kind is exactly what people bring a drone for. No cultural, entertainment, recreational or sports activity may be staged without prior permission from AOS Management (HK) Limited, and the operator reserves the right to stop one immediately; commercial filming and media interviews need permission from the Leisure and Cultural Services Department as well. Dogs, on the other hand, are welcome, and the operator says so explicitly as part of keeping the promenade inclusive. Sections of the route are closed off for large events. The operator has fenced part of the promenade for a whole afternoon and evening for a festival, with notices posted on site, so a visit planned around one particular statue is worth checking against the operator's Facebook or Instagram feed on the day. Practical support is thin but real. Restrooms and barrier-free toilets are at the restaurant and cafe area near the Anita Mui statue and at Salisbury Garden. The customer service counter sits at the centre of the promenade and handles first aid and lost property on +852 2918 1722; anything critical is 999. Baby care and breastfeeding facilities are not on the promenade at all, and the nearest are inside K11 MUSEA.

Checked 2026-08-26 · Source

Photography

The subject here is the far shore. The promenade faces south across Victoria Harbour at the Hong Kong Island skyline, which puts the sun behind those towers for much of the day and sends a midday frame home hazy and backlit. Two stretches work. The last hour or two of the afternoon rakes light across the buildings from the west, and the twenty minutes after sunset hold colour in the sky while the towers are already lit. After that it is a night exposure, and the handrail is the tripod. For the eight o'clock show, position matters far more than equipment. The lighting inside the fish-scale balustrade runs along the promenade during the show, so a low frame down the length of the rail catches both that local light and the harbour behind it, which a frame shot straight out across the water will not. The handprints are set into a varnished wooden handrail and throw a hard reflection under direct sun, so shooting them from a slight angle, or in shade, is the difference between a legible plaque and a white streak. The Bruce Lee and Anita Mui statues are the two busiest points on the walk and both carry water features; the operator's augmented-reality feature is built around this pair if a posed shot alongside them is wanted. Arrive early for either one without a queue forming behind.

Checked 2026-08-26

Where it is

Nearby

External links

• View on Wikidata