The Museum of Hebei Province is located at Jianhua South Street of Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital. It was first built in Baoding in April 1953; after two relocations in the 1980s it finally settled down at the present site in March 1987 and reopened on October 1 of the year.
The museum is made up of two parts -- the exhibition area and the relics storage building. The exhibition building covers an area of 20,028 square meters, with 11,216 square meters for exhibition halls. The storage building, one kilometer from the exhibition area, has a construction area of 5,278 square meters. As the only comprehensive museum of province-level in Hebei, its function mainly includes collection, exhibition, publicity and research into cultural relics.
The museum has a collection of 150,000 art works and specimens, including 565 first-grade cultural relics. Among the collections are some rare treasures such as those unearthed from Mancheng Lingshan Tombs of the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD) including jade burial suits sewn with gold thread, Changxin palace lantern, Boshan incense burner with gold inlay and the white-glazed porcelain wares with black designs produced by Cizhou Kiln of the Song Dynasty (960-1279) comprising pillow with pattern showing child playing ball, pillow decorated with a fishing boy and vase with peony pattern, and blue-and-white jar with fretwork floral design in red and blue glaze. Besides, it is worth mentioning that there are also some special collections such as the calligraphy and paintings by Hebei's celebrities and revolutionary relics of Anti-Japanese Aggression War.
At present, three basic displays and two special-topic exhibitions of the museum are open to the public on a daily basis. The three basic displays are: Hebei's Ancient History,showing the historic sketch of Hebei from the Paleolithic Age to the year 1840; Hebei's Revolutionary History, with 2,160 pieces of relics, displaying Hebei people's struggles in the period from the Opium War in 1840 to the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949; Restored Mancheng Tomb of the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), displaying the precious tomb articles. The two special-topic exhibitions are: Heibei Folkloreand the History of Biological Evolvement.
Besides the regular exhibitions, the museum has held various exhibitions in cities and provinces such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Jiangsu, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan and so on.
The museum has also published several books such asScenic Spots of Chengde.