National Palace Museum

The museum was completed at Waishuangxi in 1965 as a Chinese palace-style building. Floors 1 to 3 hold exhibitions and floor 4 has the Sanxitang tea room. It holds the world's largest collection of Chinese art treasures, inherited mainly from the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and covering almost the whole of 5,000 years of Chinese history, which has earned it the name 'treasure house of Chinese culture'. The museum has two sets of 'Three Treasures'. For art scholars, the Three Treasures are three monumental Northern Song ink paintings, but as they are shown only once every several years, few people get to see them. A popular set of Three Treasures therefore arose: the Jadeite Cabbage, the Meat-shaped Stone and the Mao Gong Ding. They got the name because together they resemble a popular Chinese dish, pickled cabbage and pork hotpot. There is a garden on each side of the museum grounds: Zhishan Garden on the left and Zhide Garden on the right. Zhishan Garden is modelled on Song-dynasty architecture, with two ponds, three pavilions, and many fish and small animals. Zhide Garden is at the junction of Zhishan Road and Gugong Road. It is small, with a classical round arched gateway at the entrance and a lotus pond where many lotuses bloom in summer. Besides its exhibitions, the museum offers professional guided tours, holds regular workshops on cultural objects, lectures and touring exhibitions, and has published more than 100 periodicals and books.

Translated and shortened by DealTaipei from Taiwan's national tourism database. Sources are on the terms page.