KL Tower
KL's answer to the Eiffel Tower, with Southeast Asia's skyline as the backdrop.
Standing 421 metres tall on Bukit Nanas — one of the oldest forest reserves in Malaysia, right in the middle of the city — the KL Tower (Menara Kuala Lumpur) is a telecommunications tower that opened to the public in 1996. It's the seventh tallest tower in the world by antenna height, and while the Petronas Twin Towers get more of the glory, the KL Tower offers something the Twins can't: an unobstructed view of the Twin Towers themselves. That makes it the better photography perch by a wide margin, and frankly the more interesting vantage point for understanding the city's layout.
Visitors take a lift up to the observation deck at 276 metres, where on a clear day you can see the city stretching out in every direction — the Petronas Towers gleaming to the northeast, the Klang Valley suburbs fading into the haze, and the Titiwangsa mountain range on the horizon. There's also a glass-floored Sky Deck higher up for those who want to test their nerves, plus a revolving restaurant called Atmosphere 360 that sits just below the bulb of the tower. The surrounding Bukit Nanas Forest Reserve is worth a wander too — urban jungle in the most literal sense, with macaques, monitor lizards, and ancient trees right beneath a major telecommunications structure.
The tower is most spectacular at dusk, when you can watch the city transition from golden hour to a blazing grid of lights. Crowds tend to thin on weekday mornings. The surrounding forested hill is accessible for free even if you skip the tower itself — a rare green patch that gives the whole experience a slightly surreal quality. Skip the overpriced base-level attractions and head straight for the observation deck; that's what you're here for.