Handan Museum 邯郸市博物馆

About Handan Museum

Its historical survey supplies the setting for Handan's changing role, while the specialist galleries let you compare practical ceramic forms, decoration and carved imagery more closely. This is a useful introduction before travelling to the region's scattered archaeological sites. Use the current museum on Renmin East Road; older references to previous displays or premises do not describe the present building reliably.

The museum's main building was completed on 26 December 1968, built through volunteer labor as the 'Handan Exhibition Hall of the Triumphant Victory of Mao Zedong Thought'; it was renamed twice more before taking its present name in 1984. A renovation in 1994 and a further reconstruction in 2000-2001 changed the building's floor plan from a concave shape to an enclosed courtyard shape. In 2001 the building, together with two neighboring structures, was listed as a Hebei provincial cultural relic protection unit.

The museum stands on an 18,000-square-meter site, its three-story main building rising 26 meters, with a 10,000-square-meter plaza in front and about 6,000 square meters of exhibition space. Its galleries cover the Cishan culture (磁山文化), the Warring States state of Zhao, which had its capital at Handan, and Cizhou ware (磁州窑) ceramics of the Song and Yuan periods, described as the largest such display in China; the Zhao gallery includes a reconstructed horse-sacrifice pit.

As of October 2016 the museum held 44,265 individual artifacts and 8,238 further sets, including 253 pieces or sets classed as precious relics. It was rated a national grade-2 museum in 2008 and became a national grade-1 museum in 2017, the third institution in Hebei province to hold that rating.

What to look for

• The Cizhou-kiln ceramics gallery, focused on a local ceramic tradition rather than a general porcelain survey.
• The ancient stone-carving collection and the Gandan Fenghua historical exhibition.

Location & getting there

Getting to Handan Museum

The current museum is at 399 Renmin East Road, on the west side of Handan's Art Centre opposite Longhu Park.

• Use the museum entrance and its current gallery plan to locate the permanent displays.