National Palace Museum Guólì Gùgōng Bówùyuàn

The National Palace Museum (Chinese: 國立故宮博物院 Guólì Gùgōng Bówùyuàn) is an art museum in Taipei City, Taiwan. It is the national museum of the Republic of China, and has a permanent collection of 693,507 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty. Most of the collection are high quality pieces collected by China's ancient emperors.The National Palace Museum and Palace Museum, located inside the Forbidden City in the People's Republic of China, share the same original roots, which was split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War. In English, the institution in Taipei is distinguished from the one in Beijing by the additional "National" designation. In common usage in Chinese, the institution in Taipei is known as the "Taipei Gugong" (臺北故宮), while that in Beijing is known as the "Beijing Gugong" (北京故宮).Wikipedia has an excellent write-up on the museum here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Palace_Museum