National Palace Museum

Home to the world’s largest collection of Chinese arts – The National Palace Museum in Taipei acts as the focal point of ancient Chinese culture, a condensation of ancient China not found even in Beijing, Shanghai or Hong-Kong.

The NPM showcases the largest collection of ancient Chinese artifacts in the world, with over 650,000 pieces encompassing over 8,000 years of Chinese history, from the Neolithic age to the Qing Dynasty.

It’s an astonishing collection, rich and deep and painstakingly curated. Many of the objects on display are individually labelled, with supplementary descriptions. So you can stand before a Ming jar that actually seems to vibrate in tones of midnight blue and bone, while absorbing a detailed explanation of the difference between Ming porcelain made with domestic and imported cobalt pigments.

In fact, only about one percent can be displayed at any time. Exhibits are rotated every three months, and it is commonly held that just to see the 4,000 world-class paintings in the NPM's possession would require continual visits over several decades.

This is similarly true for the NPM's unmatched collection of Song dynasty works, one of the main reasons the museum is considered among the world's top four.

Occupying the special exhibition halls on the first, second, and third floors, the exhibitions will not only bring together the best of the NPM's own collection but also feature a number of key items borrowed from other museums. These include ru-ware from the David Percival Foundation of Chinese Art at the University of London and the Osaka Municipal Oriental Porcelain Museum; art and calligraphy from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City; and a range of items from the Henan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics.