World Heritage 2023

The Palace Museum

The Palace Museum in the Forbidden City

The Palace Museum is a huge national museum complex housed in the Forbidden City at the core of Beijing, China. With 720,000 square metres (180 acres), the museum inherited the imperial royal palaces from the Ming and Qing dynasties of China and opened to the public in 1925 after the last Emperor of China was evicted.

Constructed from 1406 to 1420, the museum consists of 980 buildings. It is home to over 1.8 million pieces of art, mostly from the imperial collection of the Ming and Qing dynasties.