National Museum of China

The largest museum in China by collection size, on the east side of Tiananmen Square. The Ancient China permanent exhibition is the canonical national-history walkthrough.

The National Museum of China was formed in 2003 by merging two institutions that had occupied opposite wings of the same building since the 1950s: the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution. A major renovation and expansion completed in 2011 created one of the largest museum buildings in the world by floor area — 200,000 square metres across eleven floors — holding a collection of approximately 1.4 million registered objects.

The anchor permanent exhibition is Ancient China, a chronological walk from the Paleolithic through to the Qing dynasty. The material is exceptional: Shang and Zhou dynasty bronze ritual vessels; Han dynasty burial goods including jade suits and bronze mirrors; Tang dynasty sancai figurines and ceramics; Song dynasty paintings; Ming imperial porcelain. Object labels are bilingual and the layout is more navigable than many Chinese provincial museum equivalents. A second major permanent gallery, Road to Rejuvenation, covers the Communist Party's history from the 1840 Opium War to the present — mandatory political exhibition rather than optional tourism, but a useful document of how the party frames its own history. International travelling exhibitions occasionally occupy the temporary gallery wings.

Entry is free but requires a passport-linked online reservation. Peak season (Golden Week, summer) books out days ahead; weekday morning slots are easiest to secure. The east entrance faces Tiananmen Square directly. The scale of the building means three hours is a minimum for a focused visit to the permanent galleries; five hours is more realistic for a comprehensive circuit. Combine with Tiananmen Square and the Palace Museum for a full day on the historical central axis.