Xi'an Beilin Museum 西安碑林博物馆

About Xi'an Beilin Museum

Xi'an Beilin Museum (西安碑林博物馆) collects and studies inscribed stone tablets, epitaphs and other stone carving. It stands on the site of the former Confucian Temple (文庙) on Sanxue Street (三学街) in Beilin District, Xi'an.

The museum grew out of the Forest of Steles (碑林), begun in 1087 under the Northern Song. The transport commissioner Lü Dazhong (吕大忠) and others gathered Tang tablets left lying in the streets after the wars at the end of the Tang and the Five Dynasties. Among them were the Stone Terrace Classic of Filial Piety (石台孝经), the Kaicheng Stone Classics (开成石经) and works in the hands of Yan Zhenqing (颜真卿) and Liu Gongquan (柳公权). The tablets reached the present site in 1103, and the Confucian Temple was gradually absorbed into the complex. In 1961 the State Council placed the Forest of Steles in the first national list of key protected cultural sites.

A provincial history museum was set up at the Forest of Steles in 1944, making it the earliest museum founded in Shaanxi. When the new Shaanxi History Museum was built, the old institution split in two, and the Beilin site became an independent museum. After an expansion approved in 2007, it reopened on 12 May 2025 with an old area and a new north area, together showing more than 2,000 objects.

The National Cultural Heritage Administration describes the old area as seven numbered stele rooms flanked by two wings: a room of Han and Tang tomb sculpture to the west and a Buddhist sculpture hall to the east. Room 1 holds the Kaicheng Stone Classics, twelve Confucian classics cut on 114 stones and 228 faces, more than 650,000 characters in all. The north building has one floor above ground and two below, in exposed concrete, and hosts themed displays including one on the Six Steeds of Zhaoling (昭陵六骏).

What to look for

• The Kaicheng Stone Classics (开成石经), twelve Confucian classics on 114 Tang stones
• The Nestorian Stele (大秦景教流行中国碑), a Tang record of the Church of the East in China with Syriac names on its sides and base
• The Eastern Han Cao Quan Stele (曹全碑), listed among the collection's finest pieces
• Seven steles in Yan Zhenqing's hand, from the Duobao Pagoda Stele (多宝塔碑), written at 44, to the Yan Qinli Stele (颜勤礼碑), written at 70
• The Preface to the Sacred Teachings (集王圣教序碑), which the monk Huairen (怀仁) spent 24 years assembling from Wang Xizhi's (王羲之) calligraphy
• The Jingyun Bell (景云钟), cast in the second year of the Jingyun era (景云) under Emperor Ruizong (唐睿宗) with an inscription he composed and wrote himself
• The Six Steeds of Zhaoling (昭陵六骏) stone carvings in the north area

Location & getting there

Getting to Xi'an Beilin Museum

• Search for 西安碑林博物馆 with 西安市 and 碑林区.