The top five museums in the world
May 18 is International Museum Day. The Louvre in France, the British Museum (British Museum) in the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the United States, the Hermitage Museum (Hermitage) in Russia, and the Palace Museum in China are the five largest museums in the world. The first four of them are world-recognized museums with world-class collections of cultural relics.
The Louvre
This world-famous art palace was built at the end of the 12th century. It was the castle of the French royal family at that time and served as the treasury and archives. Later, after a series of expansions and renovations, it gradually became a magnificent palace with Renaissance style. Starting from the 16th century, Francois I began to collect various works of art on a large scale. Later generations of emperors continued this tradition and enriched the collection of the Louvre. On August 10, 1793, the Louvre Museum of Art officially opened to the public and became a museum. Today, the museum's collection of art has reached 400,000 pieces, including sculptures, paintings, arts and crafts, and 7 categories including ancient Oriental, ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece and Rome. In 1981, this exquisite building underwent extensive renovations by the French government, and the Louvre has since become a professional museum. Its art collection is rich in variety and of high quality, which can be regarded as world-class. Among them, the most important three treasures of the palace are well-known to the world: "Venus de Milo", Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and "Victory of Samothrace". So far, the Louvre has become a world-famous art palace. There is a transparent pyramid building at the main entrance of the Louvre. Its designer is the famous Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei.
British Museum
The British Museum, the British Museum, was founded in 1823. Her exhibition hall preserves the most representative treasures of British art and literature. There are many extremely precious documents and manuscripts, such as the original manuscript of the British Magna Carta, the original manuscript of Shakespeare, etc.; there are Egyptian, West Asian, Eastern, Greek, Roman and British historical relics; there are British "trophies" from past dynasties, such as the small Egyptian Sphinx, the Aegean marble taken from the Temple of the Goddess in Athens, etc.; in addition, it also collects folk customs from countries with long histories such as China and India. Materials, artworks and unearthed cultural relics. You can see many Chinese antiques, calligraphy and paintings in the Chinese exhibition room. Most of these artifacts were plundered by the British, French and Eight-Power Allied Forces when they invaded China. The vast majority of the collections in its Oriental Art Museum are Chinese cultural relics, amounting to more than 20,000 pieces. Among them are red pottery bowls from Banpo Village more than 6,000 years ago, jade knives and axes from the Neolithic Age, bronzes from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, porcelain, jades, lacquerware, paintings, sculptures, etc. from the Qin and Han dynasties to the Ming and Qing dynasties. Even the two large stone lions at the back entrance of the museum are Chinese works of art. It also houses a large number of Buddhist paintings that Stein plundered from the Dunhuang Scripture Cave. The most famous Chinese painting in its collection is "Proverbs of a Female History", which is said to have been painted by Gu Kaizhi, a great painter of the Eastern Jin Dynasty. This is a well-known and well-known masterpiece, which occupies a very high position in the history of Chinese painting. This item was taken to Britain when the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing in 1900.
The library is world-famous for its rich collection. Every kind of British book is preserved here. In fact, you can find all the country's publications here. In addition, there are many precious editions and valuable manuscripts from various countries. This library is the best place for learning, and Marx wrote "Das Kapital" here. The collection of the British Library contains more than 60,000 ancient Chinese books, including the earliest version of the Chinese Paramita Buddhist Sutra, 45 volumes of the "Yongle Dadian", Chinese palace archives of past dynasties, bamboo slips, engravings, etc., as well as more than 10,000 Dunhuang manuscripts.
The British Museum is currently divided into 10 branches: Ancient Near East Hall, Coins and Commemorative Coins Hall, Egyptian Hall, Ethnology Hall, Greek and Roman Hall, Japanese Hall, Medieval and Modern European Hall, Oriental Hall, Prehistory and Early Europe, Prints and Drawings Gallery, and Western Asia Gallery.
The Metropolitan Museum
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is the largest museum in the United States. It was built in 1870. The entire museum is a building covering an area of ??8 hectares. It is 1 of the Palace Museum in Beijing. /9, but the exhibition area is very large, no less than 24 hectares, which is twice the size of the Palace Museum. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is known as the largest museum in the Western Hemisphere, with more than 200 galleries and more than 3 million pieces of various cultural relics and works of art. The content is rich and colorful, reflecting the American style of abundant funds and grandeur.
The complete Egyptian temple from 15 BC was moved into a giant glass cover in the specially built hall of the museum. Its total weight is 800 tons. It is said that when it was demolished, in order to ensure its original appearance, it was returned to the temple. Each brick is marked with a number, which is breathtaking and can be described as a treasure of the town. The Costume Museum is also the largest in the world, with a collection of 15,000 pieces of ethnic costumes from five continents over four centuries. my country's Suzhou Garden, the Mingxuan Garden, which was only built by skilled craftsmen in Suzhou, my country, was built in September 1981 in the north hall on the second floor of the main building of the museum. This may be a typical "cultural transplant", which is very attractive to the audience. To avoid crowding, special routes have been set up to enter the park, and scheduled elevators are used to control the number of people. The garden has cornices, carved beams, fish ponds, pavilions, indoor couplets, bottles, Eight Immortals table, and Taishi chairs. In addition to the Ming Xuan, interior furnishings from England, France and Spain from the 14th to the 18th century are also arranged according to time and country. Although they are all equally magnificent, the French-style painted ceilings, English-style fireplaces and Spanish-style furniture are still engraved with the marks of different eras and different nations.
The museum also collects a large number of cultural relics and artworks from China, especially some Buddhist statues and murals. Visitors can also appreciate some precious ancient Chinese paintings in the museum, such as "The White Picture of Shining Night" by Han Gan in the Tang Dynasty.
Hermitage Museum
The Hermitage Museum, also known as the Hermitage, is one of the largest and oldest museums in the world. The palace was designed by the famous architect Rastrelli. It was originally the private museum of Empress Catherine II. In 1764, Catherine II purchased 250 paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens and others from Berlin and stored them in the Hermitage (French, meaning "Hermit Palace") of the Hermitage. And got its name.
The Winter Palace was first built between 1754 and 1762. It was destroyed by fire in 1837 and rebuilt between 1838 and 1839. It was damaged again during World War II and was carefully restored after the war. The palace has three floors, about 230 meters long, 140 meters wide and 22 meters high. It is a closed rectangle, covering an area of ??90,000 square meters, with a construction area of ??more than 46,000 square meters. The four sides of the Winter Palace have their own characteristics, but the interior design and decoration style are strictly unified. The palace is a quadrangular building with an inner courtyard, three directions facing the Palace Square, the Naval Command, and the Neva River respectively, and the fourth side connects to the Little Hermitage Palace. On the side facing the Winter Palace Square, with a slightly protruding center, there are three arched iron doors, and there are statues of the Atlas giants at the entrance. There are two rows of colonnades surrounding the Winter Palace, which is majestic. The palace is gorgeously decorated, and many halls are decorated with Russian gemstones - malachite, jasper, and agate products. For example, the Peacock Hall uses 2 tons of malachite, and the parquet floor uses 9 layers of precious wood. The Hermitage is the largest and most distinctive Baroque-style building in St. Petersburg. Its completeness and magnificence are impressive. The decoration is rich. The decorative frames and relief decorations on the windows give people strength. The columns are arranged regularly. The wall surface is alternately white and green, making the long appearance colorful and vivid. stand up. Before February 1917, the Winter Palace had been the residence of the Tsar, and was later occupied by the bourgeois Provisional Government. On November 7, 1917 (October 25 in the Russian calendar), the uprising masses captured the Winter Palace. After the October Revolution, the original official buildings and the entire Winter Palace were allocated to the Hermitage. In 1922, the National Hermitage Museum was officially established, and the Winter Palace became part of the museum. In 1946 the Winter Palace was painted its original sapphire color. The museum now consists of five buildings: the Hermitage, the Hermitage, the Old Hermitage, the Hermitage Theatre, and the New Hermitage. At present, the museum is divided into eight departments: the Department of Primitive Culture, the Department of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Department of Oriental National Culture, the Department of Russian Cultural History, the Department of Ancient Coins, the Department of Western European Art, the Department of Science and Education for Tour Guides, and the Department of Works Restoration. . The eight departments have more than 2.7 million collections, including collections of prehistoric culture and Egyptian art, as well as a large number of oil paintings and sculptures from Italy, Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. Among them are 15,000 paintings, 12,000 sculptures, 600,000 line drawings, 1 million coins and badges, 224,000 pieces of ancient furniture, porcelain, gold and silver products, gems and ivory crafts, etc. These handicrafts are displayed in more than 350 exhibition halls, such as the Picasso three-dimensional painting exhibition hall, the Italian and French painters exhibition hall, and the Russian clothing exhibition hall of past dynasties. All exhibition halls have their own characteristics, the most eye-catching of which is the Peter the Great exhibition hall, where a large number of items used by Peter the Great during his lifetime are displayed, many of which were made by him. There is a sitting statue of Peter the Great in a glass cabinet in the exhibition hall. The hair is the real hair of Peter the Great. There is a wooden pole standing next to the portrait, with a line carved more than two meters above the top of the wooden pole to show that Peter the Great was more than two meters tall. Like the Forbidden City in China, the museum has an extremely rich collection, so if visitors want to visit all the exhibition halls, it may take a month.
The Palace Museum
The Palace Museum is a comprehensive museum in China established on the basis of the imperial palaces of the Ming and Qing dynasties and their collections. In 1987, the Forbidden City was included in the "World Cultural Heritage" list by UNESCO.
According to ancient Chinese astrological theory, Ziweiyuan (the North Star) is located in the middle of the sky and is the residence of the Emperor of Heaven. Heaven and man correspond to each other. Therefore, the Emperor's residence is also called the Forbidden City. After the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, decided to move the capital to Beijing after seizing the throne, he began to build this palace and it was completed in the 18th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1420). In 1911, the Revolution of 1911 overthrew the Qing Dynasty, the last feudal monarchy in China. In 1924, the successor emperor Puyi was expelled from the palace. During this period of more than 500 years, 24 emperors of Japan lived here and ruled the country.
The Forbidden City is surrounded by a 10m high wall and a 52m wide moat. The city is 961m long from north to south and 753m wide from east to west, covering an area of ??780,000 square meters. There is a gate on each side of the city wall, and the layout of palace buildings in the city spreads out to the east and west along the central axis. The red walls, yellow tiles, painted pillars and carved beams are magnificent. The buildings and towers of the palace are scattered in different heights and are spectacular and majestic. The southern half is centered on the three main halls of Taihe, Zhonghe and Baohe, supplemented by the Wenhua and Wuying halls on both sides. It is the place where the emperor held court meetings and is called the "former dynasty". The northern half is centered on the three palaces of Qianqing, Jiaotai, Kunning, the six east and west palaces and the Imperial Garden. It is the place where the emperor and his concubines lived, held sacrifices and religious activities, and handled daily government affairs. It is called the "hou sleep" . The total building area of ??the front and rear parts of the palace reaches 163,000 square meters.
The layout of the entire palace building is rigorous and orderly, and every brick and tile follows the feudal hierarchy and etiquette, reflecting the emperor's supreme authority. The Palace Museum was officially established on October 10, 1925. After a preliminary inventory, it was found that there were more than 1.17 million cultural relics left over from the Qing Dynasty palace, which was recorded in the 28-volume "Inspection Report of the Qing Dynasty Aftermath Committee" published in 1925. Pearls, jade, rare treasures, and the wealth of the world are all gathered here. In addition, there are a large number of books, classics, documents and archives. To this end, the Palace Museum has established an Antiquities Hall, a Library, and a Documentation Hall, respectively, to organize manpower to continue sorting out cultural relics.
On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, in order to protect the cultural relics of the Forbidden City from being destroyed by the war or plundered by Japanese imperialism, the Palace Museum decided to adopt the strategy of moving the cultural relics southward to avoid the enemy. From February to May 1933, the important cultural relics in the palace were packed into 13,427 boxes and 64 packages and shipped to Shanghai in five batches, and then to Nanjing. Then a cultural relics warehouse was established in Nanjing and the Nanjing branch of the Palace Museum was established. In 1937, the cultural relics moved southward were moved to Sichuan along three routes, and were stored in Baxian, Emei and Leshan of Sichuan Province. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the three cultural relics were reunited in Chongqing and transported back to Nanjing in 1947. From the end of 1948 to the beginning of 1949, the Nanjing Kuomintang government selected 2,972 boxes of cultural relics from the Nanjing warehouse and shipped them to Taiwan. They later built a new museum in Shuangxi outside Shilin, Taipei City, and put them on public display. The remaining large number of cultural relics were gradually transported back to the Palace Museum in more than 10,000 boxes after 1949, but 2,221 boxes are still sealed in the Nanjing warehouse. In the past ten years, the Palace Museum has received an average of 6-8 million Chinese and foreign visitors every year. With the development of tourism, the number of visitors has continued to increase, and people's interest in the Forbidden City continues to flourish.