China Stone Drum Park 中华石鼓园

About China Stone Drum Park

The museum, which stands in the park, gives the park 462 mu and describes it as a cultural and ecological park combining relic display, stone-drum culture, garden visiting and leisure, with green cover above 87 per cent; it is led, the museum says, by two landmark buildings, the Chencang Shigu Pavilion and the Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, and supported by sixteen bronze or stone cultural features, among them the Zhou and Qin culture walls. The Shigu Pavilion is 56.9 m high with 7,200 sq m of floor area, five storeys outside and nine within, and displays the stone drums and, among other things, successive dynasties' research on stone-drum culture; a Chinese-character gallery runs east-west across it, and in front of it a sacrifice-to-heaven-and-ancestors square of 8,000 sq m with an altar shows scenes of Qin sacrifice, hunting and ceremony. The Zhou culture features are the Zhou culture wall, reliefs cut into the hill face telling the Western Zhou story in more than thirty small stories, and the Five Virtues Garden of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trust; the Qin culture features are the Qin culture wall, nine story reliefs, and the Qin culture square of 8,000 sq m. The park lies with the Yinxiang river to its east, Jifeng mountain to its south, the city of Baoji to its west and the Wei river to its north, and the provincial daily reports more than a million visitors a year.

Shigu means stone drum, and the park is named for the drums found on the hill. The Shaanxi Daily, quoting a park guide, says the drums were found in the Tang dynasty, that each is about a metre across and about a tonne in weight, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom so that its shape resembles a drum, and that the original stones are now held by the Palace Museum in Beijing; it adds that Kang Youwei called them 中华第一古物 and that their inscriptions, which the page calls the earliest surviving stone-carved writing, are known as 书家第一法则. The museum in the park is described by the People's Daily Overseas Edition in 2018 as a national first-class museum mainly collecting, researching and displaying bronze ware, with more than a hundred national treasures on display including the He zun and the Hu gui. Its then director, Chen Liang, said its predecessor was the Baoji Municipal Museum founded in 1958, which moved to Gongyuan South Road in 1998 and was renamed, and that the newly built museum was completed in the park and opened free of charge in September 2010. The two newspapers give its holdings very differently six years apart: 12,761 objects and sets in 2018, and more than 487,000 in 2025, the later figure coming from the museum's office director.

The city's culture and tourism bureau grades 中华石鼓园景区 as 4A in its 2026 table and gives its address as 渭滨区石鼓镇, the district in which the museum's own page also places the park. The site is called 中华石鼓园 by the museum and the newspapers and 中华石鼓园景区 by the city table.

What to look for

• The Shigu Pavilion, 56.9 m high with five storeys outside and nine within, displaying the stone drums and, among other things, successive dynasties' research on stone-drum culture
• Replicas of the ten stone drums on the pavilion's floors, the originals being held by the Palace Museum in Beijing
• The Zhou culture wall's more than thirty relief stories cut into the hill face, and the Five Virtues Garden of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trust
• The Qin culture wall's nine story reliefs and the 8,000 sq m Qin culture square
• The Chinese-character gallery across the pavilion and the 8,000 sq m sacrifice-to-heaven-and-ancestors square with its altar in front of it
• The Baoji Bronze Ware Museum, a national first-class museum whose displays include the He zun and the Hu gui

Location & getting there

Getting to China Stone Drum Park

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 中华石鼓园 with 宝鸡市 and 渭滨区.