Xianyang Museum 咸阳博物院

About Xianyang Museum

Xianyang Museum (咸阳博物院) is a history museum built around Qin and Han relics. Its main site is the Ming-dynasty Confucian Temple (咸阳文庙) on Zhongshan Street (中山街) in Xianyang's Weicheng District (渭城区), Shaanxi.

The temple dates from 1371, the fourth year of the Hongwu reign, and is itself on the sixth batch of national key protected cultural sites. The city museum opened inside it in 1962 and was renamed Xianyang Museum in 1984. In 2015 the city reorganised it as Xianyang Bowuyuan, with two branches: the Confucian Temple museum and the Xianyang Ancient Ferry Site Museum (咸阳古渡遗址博物馆), which opened in 2013. A new building begun for it in 2012 in the Xixian New Area (西咸新区) went elsewhere: in 2022 the provincial government handed it to the Shaanxi History Museum as its Qin and Han Hall (陕西历史博物馆秦汉馆).

Eight rooms in the temple show more than 3,800 objects. The first room, in a hall moved here in 1963, follows Qin from its origins to the unification, with a Warring States horse-and-rider figure, a bronze ferrule linked to Shang Yang (商鞅) and a Qin iron weight carrying an imperial edict. The side halls hold hollow bricks, floor tiles and a four-horse chariot mural from the Qin palace sites, and pottery, bronzes, jades and silk from Qin workshops and graves.

In a side courtyard, two rooms show the painted Western Han army of some 3,000 soldier and horse figures from satellite tombs of Changling (长陵). The former Dacheng Hall (大成殿) displays 152 jades; the best known, a jade immortal riding a galloping horse, was found between 1966 and 1976 near Weiling (渭陵), tomb of the Han emperor Yuan. The ferry branch is a two-level building with a traditional-style gallery above and the excavated site below.

What to look for

• The jade immortal on a galloping horse, the museum's chief treasure and a grade-one relic
• Painted Western Han soldier and horse figures from the Changling (长陵) satellite tombs
• Hollow bricks from the Qin palace sites, one showing a water god riding a phoenix
• The fragmentary Shunling Stele (顺陵残碑), with a text by Wu Sansi (武三思) written out by the Tang emperor Ruizong
• More than 100 Buddhist pieces from the Northern Wei to the Ming and Qing in the former Minglun Hall (明伦堂)
• The Ming Confucian Temple buildings themselves, a national key protected site
• The Xianyang Ancient Ferry Site Museum (咸阳古渡遗址博物馆), with more than 100 finds from the ferry

Location & getting there

Getting to Xianyang Museum

• Search for 咸阳博物院 with 咸阳市 and 秦都区.