Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall

National Memorial To The Victims Of The Nanjing Massacre Of December 1937, Opened 1985 On A Burial Site At Jiangdongmen; A National Patriotic Education Base · Nanjing, Jiangsu

A memorial built in 1985 on the site of one of the pits at Jiangdongmen, where bodies were buried after the Japanese army took Nanjing in December 1937 and killed, by the Chinese official figure carved on the wall here, three hundred thousand people over about six weeks. The building is grey stone and deliberately hard: a forecourt of gravel meant to read as bone, a wall of names, a sunken hall where you walk past an excavated section of the pit itself with the remains left in place under glass, and a room where a single water drop falls every twelve seconds, the rate at which people died during those weeks. The exhibition is extensive, documentary and unsparing, and it includes the German businessman John Rabe and the American missionary Minnie Vautrin, who ran the safety zone that saved a great many. It is free, it requires real-name booking, it closes on Mondays, and it is not a place to pass through on the way to somewhere else - most visitors are Chinese, many are here for family reasons, and conduct rules are posted and enforced.

418 Shuiximen Street, Jianye District, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Generally open 8:30-16:30 with last entry around 15:30, and CLOSED ON MONDAYS except on public holidays. ADMISSION IS FREE BUT REAL-NAME BOOKING IS REQUIRED through the official WeChat account, with a timed slot and ID scanned at the door - bring a passport. Security screening on entry. Access is heavily restricted around 13 December, the national memorial day.

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