Loulan Museum 楼兰博物馆

About Loulan Museum

The county's 2022 public-service notice says the museum was one of Ruoqiang's eight livelihood projects of 2009 and a landmark building reflecting Loulan's history and Ruoqiang's present. It covers 13,762 square metres of land with 4,688 square metres of building area and a total investment of 28 million yuan, and after two years of construction it opened free of charge on 3 May 2011, with galleries able to hold 1,000 visitors at a time. In May 2017 more than 18 million yuan was spent on a full re-display of the galleries, adding electronic equipment, screening archaeological video material daily and restoring several scenes; the notice says that up to 2021 the museum received nearly 120,000 visitors a year.

The same notice lists five halls: prehistory, Loulan history, Silk Road Loulan · Hidden Ruoqiang, A Thousand Years Brought Back to Life, and A Century of Guardianship. The county's 2026 page arranges the displays by floor, with a basement level for the Loulan mummies and Xiaohe cemetery finds including burial goods, a ground floor given mainly to prehistory with microliths and jade axes among other early finds, and an upper floor on Loulan's history and Silk Road trade with a reconstructed model of the ancient city and restored scenes; it adds other galleries covering natural resources, jujube culture and corridor art among other themes. The 2026 page also describes the museum as China's first comprehensive museum devoted to the Loulan culture theme, a description the county applies to its own institution.

On the collection the two notices differ. The 2022 notice gives 3,113 objects, mainly wooden, pottery and bronze items and mummy specimens, with six first-class, 17 second-class and 64 third-class relics excavated, among other sites, at Loulan tombs, Loulan city, the Miran site, the ancient city site south of Lop Nur and the Xiaohe cemetery. The 2026 page gives more than 5,000 objects and names among its exhibits the mummy called the Loulan Beauty, put at 3,800 years, and a woollen cloak from the Xiaohe cemetery that it calls the earliest wool textile found in the Western Regions. The two pages also disagree on the address: the 2026 page gives 221 Xingfu Road, while the 2022 notice places the museum on Tuanjie Culture Square on Xingfu Road. Neither notice says whether any part of the collection is shown in a separately ticketed temporary exhibition.

What to look for

• The hall sequence the 2022 notice lists: prehistory; Loulan history; Silk Road Loulan · Hidden Ruoqiang; A Thousand Years Brought Back to Life; A Century of Guardianship
• The mummy called the Loulan Beauty, which the county's 2026 page puts at 3,800 years
• The woollen cloak from the Xiaohe cemetery that the same page calls the earliest wool textile found in the Western Regions
• The microliths and jade axes the county page lists among the ground floor's early finds
• The reconstructed model of the ancient city and the restored scenes on the upper floor

Location & getting there

Getting to Loulan Museum

Confirm the venue or campus, reservation channel and exhibition calendar. A museum name may cover more than one building.

• Search for 楼兰博物馆 with 巴音郭楞蒙古自治州 and 若羌县.