Museum at Great Wall opens again

The China Great Wall Museum reopens at the foot of the Badaling Great Wall on Saturday after more than three years of renovation.

The museum, a flagship project of the Great Wall national cultural park's Beijing section, first opened in September 1994. It closed in April 2022 for the upgrade, with construction starting in December 2023 and completed in June 2026.

The redesigned building has about 16,000 square meters of floor space, including 10,600 sq m on the first floor and 5,400 sq m on the second. It houses collection storage, conservation, exhibition, education and service, research and administrative areas.

The main exhibition displays more than 700 artifacts and sets tracing the Great Wall's history, culture and role in the formation of the Chinese nation, according to the museum.

"Badaling combines the essence of the Great Wall. It is a key visitor attraction and a representative of the Wall," said Li Yinong, the museum's chief designer.

The museum is among local authorities' latest efforts to foster a deeper appreciation for the Great Wall — which President Xi Jinping in May 2024 called for continued efforts to protect. In his reply to a letter recounting Great Wall protection work from residents in Shixia village at the foot of the Badaling Great Wall, Xi made remarks about promoting its culture and passing on its precious heritage to future generations.

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987, the Great Wall was built over the course of 2,000 years, with construction continuing from the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC) to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Existing sections add up to a total length of more than 21,196 km, and pass through 15 provinces, administrative regions and municipalities, according to the National Cultural Heritage Administration. At the end of 2021, Beijing authorities unveiled planning for construction of the section of the Great Wall national park that falls under its jurisdiction.

The building's height was reduced to 9 meters from 16 meters. Its design draws on city walls, passes and mountain ridges, and uses stone cladding and a recessed east facade to blend into the hillside, according to the museum.

"We used many design techniques to hide it in the mountain and merge it with the mountain and greenery. This was our deliberate effort to give back to and restore the environment," Li, head of the Beijing Institute of Architectural Design Co, said.

"For ordinary museums, the collection is inside. Our greatest collection is actually outside our museum — behind us is the real Great Wall. That is why the whole museum is also called the prologue hall of the entire Great Wall of China," she said. "We hope visitors feel that it is both like a city brick and an organic part of the Great Wall."

As part of the upgrade, the museum commissioned seven artworks blending traditional heritage and contemporary spirit. They include Wanli Heping, a white marble sculpture in the Peace Hall, which is designed by Zou Feng, dean of the College of Art and Design at Beijing University of Technology.

"During the 10-month creative process, our ideas were constantly overturned. In my view, the Great Wall is not only a defensive fortification but also an architectural work and a spiritual symbol and emblem of the Chinese nation," Zou said.

"Why use white marble? It is to express the Chinese people's restrained, modest and inclusive character," Zou said.

Among the exhibits is a Ming Dynasty stone boundary marker inscribed "Wanli Spring Defense, Juyong Route, Shixia Valley, End of Works". The museum said Ming Great Wall construction used a section-by-section responsibility system, with "work start" and "work end" markers defining construction boundaries.

The museum also displays a Ming iron gate lock, 103 centimeters long with a 33-cm lock core, unearthed in the Guangou valley in the Shangguan section of the Badaling expressway in Beijing. According to the museum, it is the largest iron lock found along the Great Wall to date.

During its trial operation starting Saturday, it is adopting a no-reservation, free-admission and visitor-cap model, with a daily limit of 4,000 people, according to the museum.