The National Palace Museum in Taipei, Republic of China, contains the world's largest collection of Chinese art and cultural artifacts. There is around 720,000 items in the museum, with 15,000 pieces on display. The museum rotates its exhibit once every three months. It would take 12 years (coinciding with the Chinese calendar) to see the entire collection.
Excerpt from the NPM website:
The National Palace Museum collects, preserves, and promotes the essence of Chinese art and crafts. Accumulated over a thousand years by Chinese emperors and royal families, its collections include ceramics, porcelain, calligraphy, painting, and ritual bronzes. In addition, the Museum also possesses many fine examples of jade, lacquer wares, curio cabinets, enamel wares, writing accessories, carvings, embroidery, rare books. The quality of its collections remains unparalleled anywhere throughout the world in the field of Chinese Art. The Museum was first established in 1925 at Beijing and finally relocated at Taipei, Taiwan after WWII. The Museum is now one of the most important museums as well as research institutions through out the world, and it is also a "must-see" for foreign visitors.
The museum's
multilingual website is at
http://www.npm.gov.tw/