Zhaoling Museum
By admin on 2015-01-09

The Zhaoling Museum 昭陵博物馆, a Chinese museum of mausoleums, is located on the hilltop of Jiuzhong Mountain in Liquan County of Shaanxi Province. Zhaoling is the mausoleum of Emperor Taizong (Li Shimin), a sagacious emperor of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The mausoleum features the largest area and the most funeral objects among all emperors' mausoleums of the past dynasties, and was listed by the State Council in 1961 as one of the key cultural relics preservation sites under the state protection. In 1978, the Zhaoling Museum was officially opened to the public.

The museum has three exhibition rooms of unearthed cultural relics, murals and two steles. Boasting a collection of 4,500 unearthed cultural relics, the museum is a good place to do a research on the politics, economy and culture of the Tang Dynasty. The exhibits include color-glazed ceramic tomb figures that were excavated from the tombs of Zhen Rentai, Zhang Shigui and so on and said to be the predecessors of tri-colored glazed pottery of the Tang Dynasty; tri-colored glazed potteries excavated from the tombs of Li Zhen, An Yuanshou and so on.

The museum also displays all the artifacts removed from the excavated satellite tombs. There is a splendid selection of Tang funerary pottery, both glazed and unglazed, including figurines of Chinese and central Asians, horses and camels. There are some fragments of wall paintings, a ceremonial crown from a satellite tomb and a massive pottery roof finial from the Hall of Offerings, the main building of the original enclosure in front of the emperor's mausoleum.

Murals from Tang tombs that are treasured up in the museum total 500 square meters. The Mural of Singing and Dancing in the tomb of Li Ji provides valuable materials for the research on dancing of the Tang Dynasty.

The museum also features a Forest of Steles. This is a collection of more than 40 vertical memorial tablets, which originally stood outside the tomb mounds, together with ten flat tablets from the interiors.