Putuo District was established in December 1945, originally named the thirteenth district and changed to its current name in January 1947 after Putuo road in this area.
As an old industrial zone, the Putuo District was one of the cradle lands where Chinese Communist Party had led workers’ revolutions. Early activists of Chinese Communist Party such as Li Qihan, Deng Zhongxia, Xiang Ying, Li Lisan, Liu Shaoqi had all led workers’ revolutions in this district. This area used to depend on textile or flour industries in the past.
Putuo District used to have many squatter settlements, among which Tanzi Wan, Panjia Wan, Zhujia Wan, Yaoshui Lane were the most well-known in old Shanghai. It started to build Shanghai’s first workers’ residential quarter, Caoyang New Village in 1951 and gradually set up more than 60 residential quarters. In 1992, Putuo District started a third wave of house building. In the last decade, the old squatter settlements have all been renewed or reconstructed and more than 300 skyscrapers and hundreds of modern buildings have been established, among which are the 2.15 million square kilometers Shanghai Wanli City, a representative case of the development of new city and the 1.6 million square kilometers Zhongyuan Liangwan City, a representative case of the reconstruction of old city. The renewal and modernization of old city has enabled the perfection of the city infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Now, the whole district is making efforts to build a new Putuo.
Among the tourist attractions of the Putuo District are Jade Buddha Temple, famous for its two white-jade statues of Sakyamuni with one seated and the other one reclining; Zhenru Temple, ranked as cultural heritage under state protection in 1996 and which holds annual Zhenru Cultural Temple fairs; Huxi Mosque, one of the large mosques in Shanghai; Huxi Workers Cultural Palace, Shanghai’s largest garden-like cultural palace; Changfeng Park, famous for its beautiful scenery , the ocean world beneath the ornamental lake and Shanghai International Flower Shows which are held every year and also Changshou Park, Haitang Park, Future Island Park, etc.
In 2024, Putuo District had 34 representative items of intangible cultural heritage. Among them, 1 item was at the national level (Lu's Xinyi Boxing), 9 items at the municipal level, and 24 items at the district level. There were 39 inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, including 4 national-level representative inheritors, 12 municipal-level representative inheritors, and 23 district-level representative inheritors.
