Nantong Museum () is located in

Nantong Nantong (; alternate names: Nan-t'ung, Nantung, Tongzhou, or Tungchow; Qihai dialect: ) is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Jiangsu province, China. Located on the northern bank of the Yangtze River, near the river mouth. Nantong is a vit ...

Jiangsu Jiangsu (; ; pinyin: Jiāngsū, alternatively romanized as Kiangsu or Chiangsu) is an eastern coastal province of the People's Republic of China. It is one of the leading provinces in finance, education, technology, and tourism, with it ...

Province, China, at 19 Qixiu Road in

Chongchuan District Chongchuan District () is one of three urban districts of Nantong, Jiangsu province, China. The district has an area of and in 2001 the population was around 620,000. The postal code for Chongchuan District is 226001 and the telephone code is 051 ...

. It is near the center of the city, beside the Haohe river. It was established by a well-known educator, Zhang Jian in 1905. It is made of five parts, the center, the south, the north, the east, the west. It is one of the oldest museums in China.

Buildings

Original

The original

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make th ...

occupied three main buildings in the center, south, and north, used to display specimens of science, history, art and education.

Additions

Fifty years later, miniature garden displaying rooms, tea houses and other amusement facilities have been added to the big museum. Therefore, Nantong museum is a local comprehensive museum and a unique park. The most notable cultural property displayed are

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several pa ...

finds.

Architecture

The central building is a Chinese-style single-storey house with two floors while the south is a western-style building. The north building is in traditional Chinese style with two floors. The eastern one is Chinese style as well. In the yard, there are plenty of trees and flowers accompanied by birds and other animals. There are also pavilions and ponds.

Exhibits

The objects in Nantong museum are both historical and natural. The total count is about 50 thousand. The historical remains mostly represent local culture from the ancient times to now. The natural ones stand for not only the plants and animals in Nantong, but also in the whole country and the world. The southern and center museums have a great many historical relics. The southern one contains most of local historical remains and, outside, there are huge relics. In the reconstructed "old elephant pavilion", there are pictures of supernatural beings. The western one consists of various kinds of natural specimen. The most famous display is the framework of a

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

Picture gallery

File:Nantong Museum - Zhang Jian statue.jpg, Zhang Jian statue at Nantong museum File:Nantong Museum - kite 1.jpg, Kite at Nantong museum File:Nantong Museum - Monacanthus chinensis.jpg, Monacanthus chinensis at Nantong museum

References

Nantong Museum
Chinaculture.org {{authority control Museums in Jiangsu Buildings and structures in Nantong National first-grade museums of China Natural history museums in China Textile museums in China 1905 establishments in China Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Jiangsu