Palace Museum opens Lantern Festival night tours for first time

This cultural event – “Celebrating the Lantern’s Day at the Forbidden City” marks the first time the Forbidden City is lit up at night in 94 years since opening to the public. This will also be the first time the whole Forbidden City compound is lit up in the night.(Photo by Ji Chunhong/Guangming Picture)

The Palace Museum is a special museum. Founded in 1925, the Palace Museum was built on the foundation of the Forbidden City, the Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After five hundred years of ups and downs, the gates of the imperial palace were finally opened to the public. The unique collection of the Palace Museum is the world's largest and most preserved palace building in the Forbidden City.

The exhibition is divided into two parts: the cultural relics exhibition and experience activities. The cultural relics exhibition is located in the main hall of the Meridian Gate and the exhibition hall of the East and West Yanchi Tower. A total of 885 pieces of cultural relics are displayed. The exhibits are mainly selected from the collection of the Palace Museum, and are supported by the National Historical Archives of China, the Shenyang Palace Museum, the Capital Museum, and the Tiantan Park Management Office. The experience part includes the entire open area of the Forbidden City, which has become the exhibition venue of the Spring Festival culture. The Spring Festival couplets and gate-keeper images are displayed at the entrance of the palace. The palace lanterns are decorated under the corridors, and the tall and beautiful lanterns are set up in various building. The exhibition is not only a relics exhibition, but also a cultural exhibition. The exhibition takes into account both academic and popular arts. Relying on the rich cultural relics of the Palace Museum, through careful study of the archives of the Qing Dynasty, the exhibition strives to restore the relevant cultural relics to the original scene of history. For example, the Sky Lantern and the Longevity Lamp are two of the most grand events in the early and middle years of the Qing Dynasty. Since the 20th year of Daoguang (1840), they have disappeared into the long river of history for nearly 200 years. Related cultural relics have long been scattered and gradually become unknown. Today, through the efforts of researchers, not only in the literature, but also on site, the use of the Sky Lantern, the picture of the old imperial lifestyle, the detail size of each latern part; the lamp body model, the lamp sample, and the lamp were found from warehouses. Therefore, the Spring Festival scene of Kangxi-Qianlong period reappeared today. The event broke two records in the history of the Forbidden City – it’s an exhibition with the largest number of relics and the largest exhibiting area.