National Palace Museum, Taipeh

The National Palace Museum is an art museum in Taipei, Taiwan Province, Republic of China. It is the national museum of the Republic of China, and has a permanent collection of over 650,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing dynasty.

The National Palace Museum was originally established as the Palace Museum in Beijing's Forbidden City on 10 October 1925, shortly after the expulsion of Puyi, the last emperor of China, from the Forbidden City by warlord Feng Yü-hsiang. The articles in the museum consisted of the valuables of the former Imperial family.

In 1931, shortly after the Mukden Incident Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Government ordered the museum to quickly move its most valuable pieces out of the city to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army. As a result, on 6 February 1933, 13,491 boxes were moved in two trains from the plaza in front of the Gate of Divine Might to the South. The collection was moved to several places, including Shanghai, Anshun, Yibin as the Imperial Japanese Army advanced farther inland during the Second Sino-Japanese War, which merged into the greater conflict of World War II. The Chinese Civil War resumed following the surrender of the Japanese ultimately resulting in Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's decision in evacuating the art to Taiwan.



The display changes every 6 months and takes years to show all the 650,000 artifacts etc.

I visited the museum but photo-taking is forbidden inside. A MUST VISIT!