Chinese Ceramics Collections of the World

National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan
The Chinese ceramics and art in the museum includes one of the largest collection of imperial porcelain in the world, this means a good part of the actual imperial collection. The National Palace Museum in Taipei houses mainly art and artifacts accumulated by emperors over time. The collection was removed from the palace in the 1920s for security reasons and moved to different places in China in order to protect it. Finally it was moved to Taiwan and is now located in a museum built especially for this purpose. The collection is stored in underground tunnels and said to be so huge that it would take over 100 years to exhibit all of the approx. 650,000 pieces of Chinese art at the current pace of changing exhibits.

Palace Museum in Taipei and Palace Museum in Peking (Beijing), what is the difference?
The Palace Museum in Taipei is a museum established for the collections located in the imperial palace at the end of the Qing dynasty. That means it contains a good part of the actual emperors' collections that were located in the old imperial palace during the Qing dynasty. This seems to be almost half of the imperial collection, the part that it was possible to move to before the takeover. The Palace museum in Peking is a museum located in the old imperial palace and shows mostly exhibits collected later.


Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul, Turkey
At the end of the important trade routes with China, the Silk Road, and the sea trade routes leading to west Asia and the eastern Mediterranean sea region, Turkey has accumulated a wealth of oriental porcelain. Today, the collection of Song and Yuan dynasty ceramics is said to be one of the largest in the world. Its collection houses blue and white porcelain of the Song and Yuan dynasties in numbers that may not be found in China nowadays.




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