Plans are now in place to build an additional Palace Museum in Beijing. The new museum will be located approximately 25 kilometers away from the original, South China Morning Post reports.
Because the Forbidden City is one of China’s top tourist attractions it receives millions of visitors every year. In 2015, 15 million tourists flocked to the Forbidden City. It is estimated that, once opened, the new museum will see three million visitors per year.
A second Palace Museum will not only alleviate daily crowds from the Forbidden City but it will create more space to display art and other artifacts that have not previously been seen by the public.
The relics that are currently displayed at the Palace Museum date back to the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasty emperors and include pottery, paintings, religious artifacts and more. However, the current museum is only large enough to house less than one percent of these pieces.
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The new Palace Museum will be located just north of the Old Summer Palace’s royal garden and south of the 13 Ming Mausoleums. The structure will measure 125,000 square meters. Not only will it be large enough to display a vast collection of historic artifacts, but there will be ample space to complete restorations of other relics.
According to Shan Jixiang, director of the Palace Museum, the original museum will mainly display ancient art collections while the new museum will focus on housing a larger variety of relics, including works from around the world.
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The new Palace Museum will be designed by architect Zhang Yu. Much like the original, the new structure will boast a red-and-gold color scheme (pictured above).
It has yet to be reported when construction on the second Palace Museum will begin.
[Image via SCMP]
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