Discover Chengdu
Sichuan Museum
四川博物院
The province's flagship collection: over 260,000 objects covering Han stone reliefs, Tibetan Buddhist art and the Zhang Daqian Dunhuang cave copies. The best single place to understand Sichuan as a distinct cultural region rather than a panda stop.
The story
What makes this place special
Founded in Chengdu in 1941 with the archaeologist Feng Hanji as its first director, renamed the Western Sichuan Museum in 1950 and the Sichuan Museum in 1952. It is the largest provincial museum in western China, holding more than 360,000 objects including over 1,300 first-grade relics, and its present building beside Huanhuaxi Park and the Du Fu Thatched Cottage opened in 2009.
What you’ll discover
A large modern museum on several floors, with galleries that have long covered Ba and Shu bronzes, Han pottery and carved stone, ceramics, painting and calligraphy, ethnic and folk culture of Sichuan's minority peoples, Buddhist sculpture recovered from the Wanfo Temple site, and a substantial Tibetan Buddhist art gallery. There is also a dedicated gallery of Zhang Daqian, the Sichuan-born painter, including the copies he made of the Buddhist murals at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- The two galleries that justify the visit and that most people skip are the Tibetan Buddhist art and the Zhang Daqian room. The Tibetan collection is one of the best outside Tibet itself, which reflects Sichuan's western border, and Zhang Daqian's Dunhuang copies are in some cases better records than the deteriorating originals.
- The Han funerary carved stone and brick reliefs are a Sichuan speciality - scenes of daily life, markets, salt wells and banquets - and they tell you more about ordinary ancient life than the bronzes do.
- It is next door to the Du Fu Thatched Cottage and ten minutes from the Qingyang Palace, so three very different things make one easy half-day on the same side of the city.
- Free entry but capacity controlled, and closed on Mondays like most Chinese museums - check the reservation requirement before travelling.
- If you are also doing Jinsha and Sanxingdui, come here last. This museum provides the frame that makes the Shu bronzes at the other two intelligible.
When to come
Weekday morning. Indoors and climate-controlled, so it is the natural choice on a hot or wet Chengdu day; weekend afternoons and school holidays are busy.
Getting around
Very good. A purpose-built modern museum with lifts to all floors, level galleries, ramped entrances and accessible toilets, with seating in the galleries. Fully usable in a wheelchair, and the only demand is the walking distance across a large building.
Worth knowing before you go
Price could not be confirmed from an official source: the Chinese listings quote only tour-package prices, not a gate price. Combine it with Du Fu's Thatched Cottage, a 10-minute walk away, in one afternoon.
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