Taiwan’s National Palace Museum marks 100-year history with stunning displays

The Taipei museum’s centennial exhibitions feature spectacular works spanning paintings, sculptures, pottery and more

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Taiwan’s National Palace Museum in Taipei is celebrating 100 years since the founding of its older sibling in Beijing, as well as its own 60th birthday, with exhibitions showcasing centuries-old Chinese landscape paintings, sculptures, pottery and more. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 1:15pm, 24 Nov 2025Updated: 1:24pm, 24 Nov 2025

On October 20, around a hundred guests journeyed through heavy and persistent rain to attend the dual celebration marking both the 100th and 60th birthdays of Taipei’s National Palace Museum (NPM).

The latter age, which marks how long the museum has been open in Taiwan, on a lush hilltop just outside the capital, is significant in Chinese culture because of the sexagenary cycle, which marks patterns of fortune in Taoist belief.

The centenary, on the other hand, is a nod to the museum’s roots in the Forbidden City in Beijing, which in 1925 transitioned from a royal palace into a public museum – now The Palace Museum – and from where 2,972 crates of great artworks and other artefacts were shipped to Taiwan when the Kuomintang relocated there in 1949.

In contrast to the weather, the mood was genial inside one of the world’s most famous museums.

Its director, Hsiao Tsung-huang, greeted each visitor personally at the door before a modest ceremony in which he announced: “The National Palace Museum is 100 years old!” Give or take – October 10 was the actual day in 1925 that the Forbidden City ceased being a palace and became a museum, and was also the day of the Wuchang Uprising in 1911 that toppled the Qing dynasty.

Of course, NPM and Beijing’s Palace Museum are each blowing out their own candles for the joint birthday celebration, as today’s politics dictate.

SCMP Series

100 years of the Palace Museum

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