Kaifeng Museum 开封博物馆

About Kaifeng Museum

A Northern Song bronze bell inscribed Dasheng Yize connects the former capital with court music, while the stone list of Kaifeng officials records another side of public life. Earlier pottery, sculpture and later decorative arts broaden the picture beyond the Song period. These collections are now housed in the newer western part of the city, away from the former museum by Baogong Lake.

Kaifeng Museum was established in March 1962 on the site vacated when the Henan Museum relocated to Zhengzhou, retaining some of its staff and a portion of its historical relics. A new building near Baogong Lake, on Yingbin Road, opened on National Day in September 1988 after preparations begun in 1984. Construction on a further new building began in March 2014 on Sixth Street, Zhengkai Avenue in Kaifeng New Area and finished in 2016; the Yingbin Road museum closed to the public on 21 April 2016 to prepare for the move.

The 1988 building covered a total area of 16,000 square meters, with a construction area of over 10,000 square meters. Designed in the shape of the Chinese character for mountain (山), it had a single-eave hip-and-gable roof covered in yellow glazed tiles, a four-story central hall, and 13 exhibition rooms across the front and wing halls, along with stone-carving corridors and an artifact storage area.

The museum holds more than 80,000 cultural relics, with particular strength in bronze ware, ceramics, calligraphy, painting and stone carving. It was rated a National second-grade museum in 2008, and in 2017 the China Museums Association upgraded it to National first-grade museum status.

What to look for

• The Northern Song Dasheng Yize bronze bell in the museum’s collections.
• The Kaifeng prefects’ name-list stele, an unusually direct record of the city’s officials.

The surrounding area

A provincial city base for food traditions and a Gulou-area evening.

Location & getting there

Getting to Kaifeng Museum

Go to the museum on Sixth Street near Zhengkai Avenue, east of Zhongyi Lake in western Kaifeng. Avoid the former Yingbin Road address beside Baogong Lake when arranging a taxi or map route.