Baoji Bronze Ware Museum 宝鸡青铜器博物院

About Baoji Bronze Ware Museum

Its collections explain why the Baoji area is so important to the archaeology of the Zhou and early Qin. The bronze vessels reward close looking: their animal designs, casting and inscriptions record ceremonies, gifts and family histories. Galleries move from local discoveries to Zhou ritual and the rise of Qin, making this more than a room of decorative metalwork.

The museum's predecessor was the 1956 Baoji Historical Relics Exhibition Hall (宝鸡市文物历史陈列室), renamed the Baoji Museum (宝鸡市博物馆) in 1958 and housed at Jintai Guan (金台观). Construction of a dedicated bronze-ware museum began in 1990, and it opened on September 8, 1998, as China's first museum named for bronze culture. A new building in the Chinese Stone Drum Park opened on September 28, 2010, when the museum took its present name.

The museum's building covers a floor area of 34,800 square meters. Its collection holds more than 487,000 pieces of relics, including bronzes, pottery, jade, gold, stone and bone objects, with Shang and Zhou dynasty bronzes the most representative; many bear inscriptions bearing on Western Zhou political institutions, noble families, land tenure and ritual practice.

The museum is a national first-class museum, approved in the third such batch in 2017, and has been named a National Science Popularization Education Base and a China Overseas Chinese International Cultural Exchange Base. About 3,245 items in the collection are classed as precious relics, more than 100 of them first-class; representative pieces include the He Zun (何尊), the Lai Pan (逨盘) and the Qin Gong Bo (秦公镈).

What to look for

• The He Zun and other inscribed bronzes, with labels explaining the historical information carried inside vessels.
• The Zhou ritual and Qin-history galleries, which connect vessel types with their ceremonial use.
• Casting and decoration displays showing how bronze objects were produced.

Location & getting there

Getting to Baoji Bronze Ware Museum

Go to the Chinese Stone Drum Park on the eastern section of Binhe Avenue in Baoji’s Weibin District.

• Check the museum’s current reservation instructions before travelling to the hilltop museum.