Changzhou Museum 常州博物馆

About Changzhou Museum

Archaeological collections range from Liangzhu jade and early celadon to later lacquer, porcelain and painting. Separate collection themes include Xie Zhiliu’s art and Liu Guojun’s rosewood furniture. The natural-history section introduces fossils, insects and minerals, offering a useful contrast with the human-history galleries. Select the galleries operating on the day around these distinct themes; an object named in the collection is not necessarily on permanent display.

Changzhou Museum was founded in October 1958, first housed at Hongmei Pavilion (红梅阁) and then at Qingliang Temple (清凉寺). A new building, combined with an urban-planning exhibition hall, was approved in March 2005 and built on the west side of Civic Square, opening on 28 April 2007 as a key project of Changzhou's Eleventh Five-Year cultural development period. It has four floors above ground and one below, with displays on the ground and first floors and storage and offices above and in the basement; the building covers 28,000 square meters, with close to 10,000 square meters of exhibition space across ten galleries.

The museum holds more than 30,000 cultural relics, including 51 national first-grade pieces (one a national treasure), 245 second-grade and 2,945 third-grade pieces. It also contains Jiangsu province's only children's natural history museum, with 8,148 specimens spanning marine animals, fur-bearing animals, insects, medicinal herbs, minerals and fossils, among them one described as Shengxian Kongziniao (圣贤孔子鸟). In 2017 the China Museums Association named the museum a first-tier national museum, in its third round of such designations.

What to look for

• The Changzhou history collection includes archaeological jade, celadon and later decorative arts.
• Natural-history specimens contrast with the art and rosewood-furniture collections.

Location & getting there

Getting to Changzhou Museum

Approach 1288 Longcheng Avenue on the west side of Changzhou Civic Square in Xinbei. Civic Square metro station is the documented station for the museum area.