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National Palace Museum

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Quan
Quan
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4 out of 5
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Editor Pick

National Palace Museum

  • July 2, 2001
  • Rated 3 of 5 by Scubabartek from Warszawa, Poland
National Palace Museum

If you’re going to see only one museum in Taipei then see the National Palace Museum. It is by far the most worthwhile. The museum has several permanent exhibitions on Chinese paintings, bronze artifacts, Buddhist sculpture, pottery and porcelain, jade jewelry, curio cabinets and history of Chinese calligraphy. It is not very large (at least compared to Paris' Louvre or Moscow's Hermitage) and it's varied enough, not to make you fall asleep.

Entrance fee is 100NTD and the museum is open between 9AM and 5PM everyday. There is a wonderful Chinese garden next to the museum (entrance fee is nominal, I believe it was 10NTD) in which you can relax and enjoy feeding carp or let your kids (if you have any) run wild.

To get to the National Palace Museum, you’re once again doomed to take a bus or a taxi cab. MRT, Taipei’s metro system, does not have a line anywhere close to the museum. Take the Tamsui Line to the Shih-lin station and transfer to bus 304 or 255.

From journal Taipei – Home of the Neon God

Editor Pick

National Palace Museum - the pride of Taiwan

  • December 30, 2000
  • Rated 4 of 5 by Quan from Seattle, Washington
Taipei's National Palace Museum ranks up there among the top world class museums. It holds the world's largest collection of Chinese artifacts, around 700,000 in all, although at any given time, only a fraction of these is on display. The exhibits include priceless documents and books, priceless prehistoric artifacts, as well as treasures in bronze, porcelain, lacquerware, gold, previous jewels, and the most treasured stone of all China, jade. According to my friend, who is a Taiwanese native, only 60,000 pieces are in display in any given year, and that requires a complete rotation every three months. Which means that it takes almost 12 years for the entire collection to be displayed. In addition, the collection grows with time as donations and acquisitions continue to come in. What is most amazing is that many of these artifacts were once in the possession of Chiang Kai Shek, who as the spokesperson of the Kuomingtan appropriated these and took them out of China when it lost to the Communist revolution. It wasn't until much later when the protests of the people finally convinced him to put these national treasures into the museum. This tale is a little bit different from that written in many tour books, where the KMT supposedly did not want to open a museum because they dreamed of first reuniting China under their own rule before opening a Chinese Museum. So believe what you would, but whatever the story, there is a bright spot. Without Chiang Kai Shek, many of these artifacts would probably have been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, so I guess there are blessings in everything. There is also a Chang Foundation Museum displaying his own private collection.

From journal Taipei - the center of Taiwan

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