Discover Beijing
National Museum of China
中国国家博物馆
China's flagship museum, on the east side of Tiananmen Square, holding the country's canonical objects - Shang bronzes, the Houmuwu ding, Han jade, Tang ceramics - in a free, air-conditioned building. The single best two hours for context before you visit anything older than the Forbidden City.
The story
What makes this place special
The building on the east side of Tiananmen Square was completed in 1959 as one of the Ten Great Buildings for the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic, and housed two separate institutions - the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution - which were merged into one legal body in 2003. After four years of rebuilding it reopened on 17 March 2011 with 28 new halls and nearly 200,000m² of floor space, which makes it the largest museum by single-building area in the world. Collection figures are reported inconsistently, somewhere between one and 1.4 million items. Its single most famous object is the Houmuwu ding, a Shang bronze vessel weighing 832.84kg, the heaviest ancient Chinese bronze known.
What you’ll discover
An enormous marble entrance hall, and then a choice. The one unmissable thing is the Ancient China permanent exhibition - a chronological walk through the whole of Chinese history from the Neolithic to the Qing, on the lower levels, with the Hongshan jade dragon, the great Shang bronzes including the Houmuwu ding, Han jades, Tang figures and Ming and Qing porcelain. Above that are galleries of bronzes, jade, porcelain, coins and Buddhist sculpture arranged by material, and large revolutionary-history and contemporary political displays that occupy a lot of the upper floors. There are also major international loan exhibitions.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Go straight down to the Ancient China galleries and ignore the rest on a first visit. The museum is too large to walk through and the upper-floor political displays consume hours without returning much to a foreign visitor.
- Book several days ahead and bring your passport. It is free, it is on Tiananmen Square, and it is one of the hardest free bookings in China - slots open on a rolling window and disappear within minutes in high season.
- The security entrance is on the square side and you go through the square's own screening first, so allow much longer than the museum's own opening time suggests.
- The bronze gallery upstairs is quieter than Ancient China and arguably better displayed - if you have seen the big ding below, go up for the ritual vessels rather than sideways into the next chronological hall.
- There is very little decent food inside and you cannot easily leave and return. Eat first; the museum is a three-to-four-hour commitment once you are through security.
- Pair it with Tiananmen Square itself rather than with the Forbidden City. Doing the palace and this museum on the same day is too much walking on hard floors.
When to come
Weekday mornings, as early as your booking allows. Weekends, school holidays and the national holidays are overwhelmed. It is the best wet or freezing-weather option in central Beijing.
Getting around
Good inside, awkward getting in. The building is modern, fully lift-served, with level galleries, wide circulation, accessible toilets, seating and wheelchairs available at the entrance. The problems are outside and before: the Tiananmen Square security screening and the approach across the square, the long queue with no seating, and the sheer scale of the interior - the galleries alone involve kilometres of walking, so plan a short route rather than a tour of the floors.
Worth knowing before you go
Register and verify your booking account with your passport a day or two before you want to visit, not on the morning - verification is not instant for non-Chinese ID. Slots typically open at 17:00 Beijing time for the date seven days out and summer mornings go fast.
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Tickets open 7 days before the visit, at 17:00 Beijing time, and the sell-out risk is extreme.
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