Northwest China (西北) · 19 museums · 5 provinces
19 museums in Northwest China, grouped by province. 11 of them are closed on Monday. The last column also says whether entry is free and whether a booking is needed.
Most common here: Single-subject museum (8), General collection (4), Site or tomb museum (3). See all regions, or the background on museums.
7 museums
Shaanxi (陕西省)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Baoji Bronze Ware Museum (宝鸡青铜器博物院)Listed as the largest museum in China devoted to bronzes, in a region that has produced more inscribed vessels than any other. The piece it is known for, the He zun, carries the earliest known written use of the two characters now read as “China”, cast about 3,000 years ago. | Baoji | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Emperor Qinshihuang’s Mausoleum Site Museum (秦始皇兵马俑博物馆)The terracotta army, found by farmers digging a well in March 1974 and open since 1979. Pit one alone holds over 6,000 figures. The bronze chariots found west of the tomb mound in 1980 are shown separately. | Xi’an | Ticketed · book ahead |
| Han Yangling Museum (汉景帝阳陵博物院)The joint tomb of the Han emperor Jing and his empress, and China’s first underground site museum, where visitors walk on glass above the excavated pits. Over 100,000 pottery figures have come out, made at one third life size. | Xi’an | Ticketed |
| Shaanxi Archaeological Museum (陕西考古博物馆)The first museum built around archaeology as a discipline, opened in 2022 with 4,200 objects from fifty years of provincial excavation, nine tenths of them shown for the first time. The epitaph of Shangguan Wan’er is here. | Xi’an | Free · book ahead · closed Wed |
| Shaanxi History Museum (陕西历史博物馆)1.71 million objects from the province that held the capital under thirteen dynasties, in a building by Zhang Jinqiu on Tang palace lines. Booking is hard: tickets open five days ahead at five in the afternoon. | Xi’an | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Xi’an Beilin Museum (西安碑林博物馆)Founded in 1087 to house the Kaicheng stone classics, and now more than 4,000 stelae and epitaphs from Han to Qing: listed as the largest stone library in China, and the reference collection for calligraphy. | Xi’an | Ticketed |
| Yan’an Revolution Memorial Hall (延安革命纪念馆)Covers the thirteen years from 1935 to 1948 when the Communist Party leadership was based in Yan’an. The memorial itself opened in 1950; the sites it refers to, at Zaoyuan and Yangjialing, are scattered around the modern city. | Yan’an | Free · book ahead |
4 museums
Gansu (甘肃省)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Dunhuang Museum (敦煌博物馆)The town museum for Dunhuang, holding 13,000 items: manuscripts and paintings from the sealed library cave, Han wooden documents, and full-size copies of the Mogao wall paintings. | Dunhuang | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Jiayuguan Great Wall Museum (嘉峪关长城博物馆)The first museum covering the Great Wall as a whole, inside the Jiayuguan fort at the western end of the Ming wall. Han bamboo documents and Ming firearms are among the excavated material. | Jiayuguan | Ticketed |
| Gansu Provincial Museum (甘肃省博物馆)Recorded as the largest museum in Gansu, founded in 1956, with 80,000 items on the Silk Road, Gansu painted pottery, Buddhist art and fossils. The Galloping Horse, a second-century bronze poised on one hoof above a bird, was found in the province. | Lanzhou | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Wuwei Xixia Museum (武威西夏博物馆)The only museum devoted to Western Xia culture, at the place where the script was deciphered. The Liangzhou stele of 1094, found here in 1804, carries the same text in Tangut and in Chinese, which is what made reading it possible. | Wuwei | Free · closed Mon |
3 museums
Qinghai (青海省)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Qinghai Atomic City Memorial Hall (青海原子城纪念馆)The site of plant 221, China’s first nuclear weapons base, where the first atomic bomb was built in 1964 and the first hydrogen bomb in 1967. The grassland around it is the Jinyintan of the song In That Faraway Place. | Haibei Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Qinghai Provincial Museum (青海省博物馆)Ranked the largest museum in Qinghai, with 15,000 items, strongest on thangka painting and on the gold and silver from the Tubo-period tombs at Reshui in Dulan. | Xining | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Qinghai Tibetan Culture Museum (青海藏文化博物馆)Covers Tibetan medicine, history, art and daily life. Its centrepiece is a painted scroll 618 metres long, made by some four hundred artists over nearly thirty years, with eighty medical thangkas illustrating the Four Tantras. | Xining | Ticketed |
3 museums
Xinjiang (新疆维吾尔自治区)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Loulan Museum (楼兰博物馆)Covers Loulan, the Silk Road town on the southern route that the desert took back. Material from Loulan, Miran and the Xiaohe cemetery, including copies of the 3,800-year-old bodies the dry sand preserved. | Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture | Free · closed Mon |
| Turpan Museum (吐鲁番博物馆)Listed as the second-largest museum in Xinjiang, holding about 20,000 items from the oases around it: documents, textiles, coins and preserved human remains that the dry climate left intact. The ruined cities of Jiaohe and Gaochang are close enough to see the same day. | Turpan | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum (新疆维吾尔自治区博物馆)Sixty thousand items across twelve galleries: stone and bronze, textiles, documents, and bodies preserved by the dry ground, among them the Xiaohe woman. The brocade armguard reading Five Stars Rise in the East may not leave the country. | Urumqi | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
2 museums
Ningxia (宁夏回族自治区)
| Museum | City | Getting in |
|---|---|---|
| Ningxia Museum (宁夏博物馆)Listed as the largest museum in Ningxia: Helan mountain rock art on the ground floor, provincial history above, folk material on the third. A gilt bronze ox from a Western Xia tomb and a tomb door carved with the whirling Sogdian dance are its known pieces. | Yinchuan | Free · book ahead · closed Mon |
| Xixia Museum (西夏博物馆（银川西夏陵）)Covers the Western Xia, the Tangut state that held the northwest from 1038 to 1227 alongside Song, Liao and Jin. Its script of some 6,000 characters looks Chinese but is unrelated, and went unread for centuries. | Yinchuan | 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.