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Western Han Dynasty Nanyue King's Mausoleum Museum

Western Han Nanyue King's Mausoleum Museum, located on Jiefang Bei Road, Guangzhou, is an awe-inspiring place with its exhibition of the elegant and sophisticated artifacts excavated from a tomb of an ancient king in South China, and one of the 80 famous museums in the world.

Western Han Nanyue King's Mausoleum was originally 20 meters under Elephant Hill and was discovered in 1983. It is the oldest and largest Han tomb with the most funerary objects in Lingnan (South of the Nanling Mountain) Area. The stone-chamber tomb is for its second ruler, Zhao Mei of Nanyue State of the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.). The museum, covering 14,000 square meters, has 10 exhibition halls exbitioning burial objects excavated from the tomb.

The tomb is 10.85 meter in length and 12.43 meters in the widest place, consisting of the front and rear chambers. It is made up of 750 huge stones with colorful murals. Over 1,000 pieces of cultural relics, bronze ware and terra cotta ware in particular, feature the Yue Culture of south China(Nanyue Culture). Represented also are traces of central Chinese culture, the Chu culture of south China, the Bashu culture of southwest China, the Hun culture from the northern grassland, and even foreign cultures.

The most famous in the tomb is a silk-jade garment made up of 2,291 pieces of jade. The garment with jade pieces connected by silk is the only one of its kind in the world.
It shows the early development of jade garments as well as development of the Nanyue culture.

In addition, a chariot, gold silver vessels, musical instruments, and sacrificial human remains are also found in the Western Han Nanyue King's Mausoleum.