Luoyang Museum 洛阳博物馆

About Luoyang Museum

Luoyang Museum (洛阳博物馆) is a comprehensive history museum and a national first-grade museum, housed since 2011 in a building on Nietai Road (聂泰路) in Luolong District (洛龙区), Luoyang (洛阳).

The present building stands at the north-western corner of the Sui and Tang city's old residential wards, with Luopu Park (洛浦公园) to the north and the botanical garden to the south. Its outline is modelled on a square ding cauldron, a reference to the phrase "dingding Luoyi" (定鼎洛邑), setting the ritual cauldrons, and so the capital, at Luoyi. The site covers 300 mu, and the building has 62,000 square metres of floor space, 20,000 of them underground.

The museum dates from May 1958, when it was set up in the main hall and side rooms of the Guanlin Temple (关林庙), 7 kilometres south of the city, with a staff of 14. In 1972 it borrowed a flower shed in Wangcheng Park (王城公园) for an exhibition, then moved into a new building on Zhongzhou Road that opened on 1 May 1974. Work on the current building began at the end of 2007, and in 2008 the museum was named in the first group of national first-grade museums.

The core display, Heluo Civilization (河洛文明), fills more than 5,000 square metres. It follows Luoyang's five capital cities in turn: the Xia and Shang capitals, the Eastern Zhou royal city, the Han-Wei city and Sui-Tang Luoyang, in sections running from prehistory to the Five Dynasties and Northern Song, using objects excavated in Luoyang. It was named one of the country's ten best exhibitions of 2011. A separate palace hall shows objects sent from the Palace Museum in Beijing in 1973 with Premier Zhou Enlai's approval; they were once kept in the Great Buddha Hall of the Cining Palace (慈宁宫), and most are Qing tribute pieces. Buddhist statues, shrines and altar vessels make up the bulk, alongside court furniture and screens. Other strengths of the collection are jade, bronzes, stone carving, Han pottery figures and Tang three-colour glazed ware.

What to look for

• Heluo Civilization (河洛文明), the permanent display tracing Luoyang's five capital cities from prehistory to the Northern Song
• Palace relics hall, with Qing Buddhist statues, shrines and ritual objects from the Cining Palace's Great Buddha Hall in Beijing
• Palace-hall sections devoted to Tsongkhapa (宗喀巴) and to Bodhidharma (达摩) with other Buddhas
• Han pottery figures and Tang three-colour (sancai, 三彩) glazed ware
• The building itself, shaped like a square ding cauldron

Location & getting there

Getting to Luoyang Museum

• Search for 洛阳博物馆 with 洛阳市 and 洛龙区.