Forbidden City? Not if head of China’s top museum has any say
President of Beijing’s Palace Museum is serious about making it a public treasure, opening new areas of the facility and pushing to make admission free
The Palace Museum, a symbol of China and the most visited museum in the world last year, would be open to the public for free if its president, Shan Jixiang, had his way.
In a live webcast of an interview with People’s Daily last week, Shan said the museum, known as the Forbidden City, was not considering a price hike. On the contrary, the museum might even be dropping its already low admission fee.
“We would consider free admission in future,” Shan said.
The Forbidden City, the imperial palace during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties, is a must-see tourist attraction in Beijing.
It charges 60 yuan (US$9) per person for admission, far lower than the €15 (US$17) for the Louvre in Paris or the £23 (US$29) for Buckingham Palace in London. But it has become so crowded that the museum started to impose a daily cap on visitors from 2015, with a maximum of 80,000 allowed in each day.
