Sanxingdui Museum

Museum Of The Bronze Age Sanxingdui Culture, With A New Hall Opened In 2023; National 5A Tourist Attraction · Guanghan, Sichuan

The museum of one of the strangest archaeological discoveries ever made in China, on the banks of the Duck River outside Guanghan in Sichuan. In 1986 brickmakers digging clay broke into two pits filled with smashed and burned offerings from a Bronze Age kingdom nobody knew existed: hundreds of bronze heads with angular features and gold foil masks, a figure almost four metres tall on a plinth, bronze trees hung with birds and bells, elephant tusks and jade blades, all buried around three thousand years ago and unrelated in style to anything from the Yellow River heartland. Strangest of all are the masks with eyes on stalks, protruding like telescopes. New pits opened from 2020 produced thousands more objects, and a large new hall opened in 2023 to display them, with restorers visible at work behind glass. The civilisation that made them left no writing and disappeared; the museum sets out what is known and is honest about how much is not. It sits an hour from Chengdu and pairs naturally with the Jinsha site in the city.

Sanxingdui Museum, Guanghan, Deyang, Guanghan, Sichuan, China

Daily; the comprehensive hall 8:30-18:00 with last entry 17:00 and the bronze hall to 18:30, extended to 20:00 on major holidays. Closed only on Lunar New Year's Eve.

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