Designed by I.M. Pei, whose family came from Suzhou. Pei lived most of his life in the US and was a very successful architect there. Perhaps his best-known work is the glass pyramid outside the Louvre in Paris. He has also designed a number of museums including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. He came out of retirement in his 80s to return to Suzhou to create a museum that married his modernist sensibility with his sense of the region; as a teenager he lived in Shanghai and often visited family in Suzhou. Do not miss the recreation of the Ming Dynasty scholar's study.