Palace Museum (Forbidden City)

The Palace Museum was established on October 10, 1925, a year after the last Qing emperor was evicted from the Forbidden City. The complex itself, built between 1406 and 1420, covers roughly 720,000 square meters across nearly a thousand buildings and is recognized by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures anywhere.

Its holdings run past 1.8 million objects from the Ming and Qing dynasties, including Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan, a long handscroll depicting daily life along a river during a Song-dynasty festival. The painting is so fragile it is shown only occasionally, in short rotations, to limit light exposure.

World War II forced the collection's evacuation, and it was later split: thousands of crates ended up at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, while others remained in mainland storage. Even divided, the Beijing collection now draws more than 15 million visitors a year, making it the most visited museum on earth.