Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca

Melaka began as the port of a Malay kingdom that the ruler Parameswara founded at a fishing village at the mouth of the Malacca River. A Ming envoy arrived in 1405, and the fleets of Admiral Zheng He called there repeatedly. On 15 August 1511 the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque took the city and built the fortress known as A Famosa. In 1641 the Dutch, allied with Johor, captured it from the Portuguese.

On 17 July 1786 Francis Light of the British East India Company landed on Penang Island, and on 11 August he formally took possession of it in the name of the British king. The island was leased from the Sultan of Kedah for 6,000 Spanish dollars a year, and George Town became the first British settlement in Southeast Asia. As a free port it drew immigrants from across Asia, and in 1826 it became part of the Straits Settlements with Malacca and Singapore, serving as their capital until 1832.

Both towns were occupied by Japan during the Second World War. Melaka keeps government buildings, churches, squares and fortifications from the Malay sultanate and the Portuguese and Dutch periods, while George Town keeps the houses and commercial buildings of the British era. The two were inscribed together in 2008 for townscapes shaped by Malay, Chinese and Indian communities and three successive European powers, above all their many kinds of shophouses.