Philatelic museum

The Philatelic Museum stands in Phuket City Municipality, inside the province’s first official post-office building. Its Sino-Portuguese façade combines reinforced concrete, patterned square columns, cement railings, and louvered oak windows. A high white ceiling rises above wooden shuttered doors. Half-cylinder Chinese clay tiles cover the concrete roof, while old-style characters mark the front sign.

Thailand’s postal and telegraph history fills the main room through stamp displays and enlarged photographs. Royal forerunners of Siam’s first official issues appear among those images. Another room holds old postal and telegraph equipment, while a library gathers Thai postal-history books and journals. The Fine Arts Department preserved the building after demolition plans emerged, and renovation began in 1994. The museum opened there in December 2004.

The library also serves as a meeting place for local stamp clubs. Staff sometimes let visitors use the old Phuket hand canceller on commemorative covers. The land once welcomed villagers and sea gypsies trading seafood along the canal. In 1942, a major flood turned the road outside into a canal for a while.