Qualla: Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital

Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yumeto, CC BY-SA 4.0. On its first day open, October 20, 2019, the Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital received 38,000 visitors. Within a week, the count exceeded 110,000. People came to see more than 2,000 artifacts excavated from the nearby Erlitou archaeological site -- bronze vessels, jade blades, turquoise-inlaid plaques from a civilization that flourished nearly four thousand years ago. But the museum itself made a statement before visitors even stepped inside, its walls of rammed earth and oxidized copper deliberately echoing the materials of the Bronze Age culture it commemorates.

Image: Yumeto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital: A Name That Sparked Debate

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yumeto, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum's name tells a story of its own. When the foundation stone was laid on June 11, 2017, the project was called simply the "Erlitou Site Museum." The National Cultural Heritage Administration had recommended against including "Xia Capital" in the title, because archaeolog...

Image: Yumeto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital: Rammed Earth and Copper Sky

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A1A, CC BY-SA 3.0. Designed by Professor Li Li's team at Tongji University, the museum covers roughly 246 mu of land, with a total building area of 31,781 square meters. The steel-frame structure rises 22.9 meters at its highest point, but it is the surface treatment that makes the building remarka...

Image: A1A | CC BY-SA 3.0

Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital: Five Halls, Four Thousand Years

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yumeto, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum contains five permanent exhibition halls spread across two floors, with three on the ground level and two above, plus two temporary exhibition spaces on the second floor. The collection spans the full range of Erlitou culture artifacts: bronze ritual vessels including ...

Image: Yumeto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Erlitou Site Museum of the Xia Capital: Sixty Years in the Making

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tim Wu, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum's opening resolved a problem that had persisted since excavations began at Erlitou in 1959. For decades, the site lacked adequate facilities for storing, studying, or displaying the artifacts being unearthed. Plans for a museum had been discussed many times over those ...

Image: Tim Wu | CC BY-SA 4.0