The Ming Xiaoling Museum is located within the Zhongshan Scenic Area in Xuanwu District, Nanjing City. It is a special exhibition hall dedicated to Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder of the Ming Dynasty, the World Cultural Heritage Site of Ming Xiaoling, and the Ming Dynasty’s culture in Nanjing. The new museum’s exterior adopts the architectural style of the Jiangnan region during the Ming and Qing dynasties, with the use of typical elements such as white walls, gray tiles, carved wooden doors, sloping roofs, horse-head walls, and lattice windows, which harmonize with the surrounding cultural relics of the Ming Xiaoling, such as the Da Jin Gate and the Si Fang City, as well as the lush natural environment.
This also coincides with the ‘unity of heaven and humans’ construction concept of the Ming Xiaoling over 600 years ago. Ming Xiaoling is the joint tomb of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, and Empress Ma, named Xiaoling due to the empress’s posthumous title ‘Xiao Ci’. It is a large imperial tomb in Nanjing and one of the ancient imperial tombs in China. As the foremost of China’s Ming tombs, Ming Xiaoling is magnificent and represents the achievements of architectural and stone carving art in the early Ming Dynasty, directly influencing the form of imperial tombs for over 500 years in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The imperial tombs of the Ming and Qing dynasties, distributed in historical sequence in Beijing, Hubei, Liaoning, Hebei, and other places, were all constructed according to the regulations and patterns of Nanjing’s Ming Xiaoling, holding a special position in the history of the development of Chinese imperial tombs, thus earning the reputation of ‘the first royal tomb of the Ming and Qing dynasties’. Opening hours are all year round, Tuesday to Sunday from 09:00 to 17:00; all day closed on Mondays; and during New Year’s Day, Spring Festival, Qingming Festival, Labor Day, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival, and National Day, from 09:00 to 17:00.
