North China (华北) · 28 museums · 5 provinces
28 museums in North China, grouped by province. 24 of them are closed on Monday. The last column also says whether entry is free and whether a booking is needed.
Most common here: General collection (7), Single-subject museum (7), Site or tomb museum (4). See all regions, or the background on museums.
14 museums
Beijing (北京市)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Archaeological Museum of China (中国考古博物馆)The first national museum named for archaeology, opened in September 2023 under the Chinese Academy of History, in a building shaped like the character for history. Everything shown is excavated material, including the turquoise dragon from Erlitou. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum (北京古代建筑博物馆)The first museum of Chinese building technique, inside the Ming and Qing Altar of Agriculture. The main hall holds a 1:1000 model of the walled city as it stood in 1949 and a Ming coffered ceiling taken from Longfu Temple. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Beijing Stone Carving Art Museum (北京石刻艺术博物馆（五塔寺）)Built around the Diamond Throne Pagoda of 1473, one of the earliest in China and an Indian form built by Chinese hands. Two 600-year-old ginkgos stand beside it. Jesuit gravestones, Matteo Ricci’s among them, are in the collection. | Beijing | Ticketed · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Capital Museum (首都博物馆)The municipal museum of Beijing, 63,000 square metres, covering the city’s own history rather than the country’s. Strong on the Western Zhou bronzes found in the Beijing area. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| China National Arts and Crafts Museum / China Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum (中国工艺美术馆（中国非物质文化遗产馆）)The national museum of applied art, which is also the national intangible heritage museum, open since February 2022 in the Olympic park. Jade and ivory carving, lacquer, embroidery and metalwork, with four large jadeite pieces as its centre. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| China Railway Museum (中国铁道博物馆)Three sites: the old Zhengyangmen station, a hall on the eastern edge of the city, and a memorial to the engineer Zhan Tianyou. The eastern hall keeps more than fifty locomotives and carriages, including the steam engines named for Mao Zedong and Zhu De. | Beijing | Ticketed · closed Mon |
| Dazhong Temple Ancient Bell Museum (大钟寺古钟博物馆)The only museum of bells in China, in a temple of 1733. The Yongle bell, cast in the early 1400s, weighs 46.5 tonnes and carries 230,000 characters of Buddhist text on its surface, more inscribed words than any other bell. | Beijing | Ticketed · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Geological Museum of China (中国地质博物馆)Founded in 1916 and described as the oldest geoscience museum in Asia, with more than 200,000 specimens of minerals, rocks, gems and fossils, among them the feathered dinosaur Sinosauropteryx. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution (中国人民革命军事博物馆)China’s first general military museum, covering the People’s Liberation Army, earlier Chinese warfare and world military history. Aircraft, artillery, missiles and small arms are shown alongside uniforms and decorations. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| National Art Museum of China (中国美术馆)The national museum of fine art, open since 1963, holding over 100,000 works with the emphasis on Chinese artists of the past century, among them Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong and Wu Guanzhong. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| National Museum of China (中国国家博物馆)Recorded as the largest single museum building in the world by floor area, nearly 200,000 square metres on the east side of Tiananmen Square. Two standing exhibitions, Ancient China and The Road to Rejuvenation, out of 1.4 million objects. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| National Natural History Museum of China (国家自然博物馆)The national natural history museum, founded in 1958, with 430,000 specimens covering earth science and the evolution of life. The Yellow River elephant and an early Jurassic mammal fossil are among them. | Beijing | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| The Palace Museum (故宫博物院)The Ming and Qing palace, occupied by twenty-four emperors between 1420 and 1912 and now described as China’s largest museum of art and antiquity: 720,000 square metres of ground and more than 1.86 million objects. | Beijing | Ticketed · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Zhoukoudian Site Museum (周口店北京人遗址博物馆)The cave site 50 km southwest of Beijing where the first Peking Man skullcap was found in 1929. Three successive populations lived here between roughly 700,000 and 10,000 years ago. | Beijing | Ticketed · closed Mon |
5 museums
Shanxi (山西省)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Datong Museum (大同市博物馆)A hundred and seventy thousand items arranged as four periods of the city: the frontier, the Northern Wei capital at Pingcheng, the Liao and Jin western capital, and the Ming and Qing garrison. | Datong | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Yungang Grottoes Museum (云冈博物馆)Carving at Yungang began in 460 under the Northern Wei: 45 main caves and more than 59,000 figures. The museum covers how they were cut and what the Wei court believed. | Datong | Ticketed |
| Jin State Museum (晋国博物馆)Built over the Tianma-Qucun site, the early Jin capital, where nineteen tombs of nine generations of Jin marquises were excavated and are shown where they were dug. The Su bell set carries a 355-character campaign record. | Linfen | Ticketed · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Shanxi Bronze Museum (山西青铜博物馆)The first provincial museum devoted to bronzes. Shanxi has yielded more inscribed vessels than most provinces, from Shang-period statelets through the rise of Jin; the sixteen Su bells of the Marquis of Jin carry a campaign record. | Taiyuan | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Shanxi Museum (山西博物院)The largest museum in Shanxi on official figures. The bird-shaped zun from the tomb of a Marquis of Jin is its emblem; the Houma covenant tablets and the Central Asian carved sarcophagus of Yu Hong are here as well. | Taiyuan | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
4 museums
Tianjin (天津市)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Pingjin Campaign Memorial Hall (平津战役纪念馆)Covers the Pingjin campaign of 1948 and 1949 across five halls. The panorama room holds a painted cyclorama seventeen metres high and 168 metres around. | Tianjin | Free · closed Mon |
| Tianjin Museum (天津博物馆)Traces back to 1918. Its roughly 200,000 items are split between classical Chinese art and documents of the period when Tianjin was a treaty port, which is an unusual pairing for a provincial museum. | Tianjin | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Tianjin Natural History Museum (天津自然博物馆)China’s first natural history museum, founded in 1914 by the French priest Emile Licent as the Musee Hoangho Paiho. Four hundred thousand specimens; the mounted Mamenchisaurus from Hechuan is what most visitors come for. | Tianjin | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Zhou Enlai & Deng Yingchao Memorial Hall (周恩来邓颖超纪念馆)The only memorial in China to a married couple, opened in 1998 on the centenary of Zhou Enlai’s birth. Seventy thousand square metres of grounds covering both their lives. | Tianjin | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
3 museums
Hebei (河北省)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Chengde Mountain Resort Museum (承德避暑山庄博物馆)Inside the Qing summer palace at Chengde, where emperors spent the hot months and went on working. The museum occupies the main palace buildings: court porcelain, painting, and the clothing of emperors and empresses. | Chengde | Ticketed |
| Hebei Museum (河北博物院)Listed as the largest museum in Hebei, with 210,000 items. The Changxin palace lamp, from the Mancheng Han tombs, draws its own smoke down the servant’s sleeve into the body of the lamp; Liu Sheng’s jade burial suit came from the same site. | Shijiazhuang | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Eastern Qing Tombs Museum (清东陵博物馆)Fifteen tomb complexes over 80 square kilometres, holding 161 people including the Shunzhi, Kangxi, Qianlong, Xianfeng and Tongzhi emperors. Qianlong’s underground chamber is carved throughout; Cixi’s halls are gilded over huanghuali wood. | Tangshan | Ticketed |
2 museums
Inner Mongolia (内蒙古自治区)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Inner Mongolia Museum (内蒙古博物院)Ranked the largest museum in Inner Mongolia, organised as Mongol history, the geology of the plateau, and the grassland peoples. The Xiongnu gold crown, topped with an eagle, is the piece to find. Free guided tours at 9:30 and 14:30. | Hohhot | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Zhaojun Museum (昭君博物院)Built at the tomb of Wang Zhaojun, the Han palace woman sent to marry the Xiongnu chanyu, after which the two sides kept peace for some sixty years. The mound stands 33 metres. | Hohhot | Ticketed |
Getting In
Most of these are free and most of them want a booking, made on a Chinese platform a day or several ahead, and the good ones sell out in the school holidays. Tell our local team which cities you will be in and they will handle the bookings and say which halls are worth the time.