Downtown Yangzhou is cut through the middle from north to south by Guoqing Lu, which, to the south, turns into Dujiang Lu; south of the canal this eventually leads to the main ("East") bus station. Running from east to west across Guoqing Lu are two or three of the main shopping streets (confusingly, all with different names to the west and to the east of the main road). Huaihai Lu and Taizhou Lu, respectively delineate the western and eastern extents of the central area. Gardens and temples are scattered thinly throughout the city, though there is a concentration of sights around the canal to the north and northwest, where you'll find a snaking greenbelt that houses Shou Xihu and Daming Si . Much of the town can be explored on foot, though you'll need city buses for trips right across town. Yangzhou is mobbed by day-trippers from nearby Nanjing on weekends and holidays; you'll find things far less hectic if you visit on a weekday.

Starting from the centre and moving north, the first of the gardens is a classical rock and water Chinese composition, the Ge Yuan (daily 8am-4.45pm; ¥8), which can be entered from Yanfu Dong Lu, a few minutes' walk east of Guoqing Lu (or from Dongguan Jie to the south). Despite being relatively free of visitors, however, the Ge Yuan, with its ponderously styled pavilions and landscaped rockery supposedly suggesting the four seasons, is in a state of some neglect and less attractive than He Yuan farther south.

A rather more promising line of exploration is to cross the canal immediately north of Ge Yuan and walk a few minutes west from the top of Guoqing Lu, as far as the Museum (daily 8.30am-5.30pm; ¥5), overlooking the canal near the Xiyuan Hotel. A delightful group of assorted old pavilions set in large grounds, this is one of China's more interesting provincial museums, featuring a thousand-year-old wooden boat recovered from the Grand Canal, as well as an extraordinary funeral suit made of five hundred pieces of jade, which dates back to the Han dynasty. Right next to the museum, to the east, in grounds full of flowers and plum trees, is the Shi Kefa Memorial (daily 8.15-11.30am & 2-5.30pm; ¥4), a temple devoted to the memory of the local hero, Shi Kefa, who in the last days of the Ming dynasty gave his life resisting the advancing Qing armies. The victorious Qing subsequently raised this memorial to him in recognition of his courage. West from the museum is a strip along the canal now gearing up to become a tourist centre, with "traditional" architecture and souvenir shops, while in front, right on the canal itself, stands a small jetty from where tour group boats run up to Shou Xihu and Daming Si.

Moving to the west of the central area, you'll find the main surviving testament to the presence of Persian traders in the city in the Middle Ages, the Xianhe (Crane) Mosque , just north of Ganquan Lu, on the small turning to the east of Wenhe Lu. Small and austere, its main feature is one wall covered entirely with Arabic script. You may have to sign your name in the book before being admitted here.

The streets in this western quarter conceal several more sights, a seemingly haphazard selection of survivors from different eras of history, scattered thinly in among the traffic and the modern shopping streets. One is the Shi Ta , a diminutive Tang-dynasty stone pagoda standing in the shade of a thousand-year-old gingko tree, on Shita Lu just west of Huaihai Lu. Right in the middle of the junction between Shita Lu and Wenhe Lu you'll come across the round Ming-dynasty Wenchang Ge (Flourishing Culture Pavilion), resembling a mini Temple of Heaven, and one block north, there's the thirteenth-century Si Wang Ting (Four View Pavilion), a three-storeyed octagonal pavilion.

For more evidence of the early Muslim presence in Yangzhou, take a look to the east of the centre, just past the canal on Jiefang Nan Lu. From the west bank of the canal, or from the Jiefang Bridge, just to the north, you'll see a wooded hill and behind it, a jumble of Muslim architecture. This rather sad, dusty relic from the most cosmopolitan era of China's history is actually the Garden Tomb of Puhaddin (or Bulhanding; daily 7.15am-4.30pm; ¥7), a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, who came to China in the thirteenth century, spent ten years in Yangzhou and adopted the city as his home, to the extent that he insisted on being buried here. Labelled in Chinese, paintings and artefacts in a small exhibit hall next door chronicle his life.

There are a couple more attractions in the south of the city, though again rather randomly scattered. A short way north of the canal, in an old, quiet part of town, is the exquisite He Yuan (daily 8am-6pm; ¥5). Designed in the nineteenth century, this tiny garden uses trees, shrubs and a raised walkway to give an ingenious illusion of variety and depth - it's a beautiful little place for a stroll on a sunny morning. The He Yuan also contains a couple of charming tea houses.

Finally, in the far south of the city, on Wenfeng Lu, is the conspicuous seven-storey Wengfeng Ta (daily 6.30am-5.30pm; ¥2), standing by a bend in the Grand Canal in a small plot crammed with hollyhocks. Built in 1582, it was intended to bring luck to local candidates in the imperial examinations, though its main interest now is as a vantage point over the intense activity on the water. Walk up alongside the canal and wharves for a closer view of the heavy river traffic and the small family boats queuing in vast jams to be laden with anything from grain and bottled drinks to gravel and truck tyres. There is no bus connection to the pagoda, so you'll either have a rather ugly thirty-minute trek southwest from the long-distance bus station, or you can take a rickshaw.