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Taiwan's famed museum reopens to expand scope across Asia

Taiwan's National Palace Museum (NPM), world renowned for its collection of ancient Chinese treasures, is scheduled to reopen this week after a three-year renovation with plans to expand its scope into other Asian cultures.

The museum, three main buildings in elegant pale yellow and white bricks with green-glazed roofs in imitation of a traditional palace facade, sits at the foot of a suburban Taipei mountain.

It fittingly houses more than 655,000 artefacts from China spanning some 7,000 years, from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the last imperial Qing dynasty (1644-1912).

The museum was originally founded in 1925 in China by a warlord who evicted Pu Yi, the last emperor, from his palace -- what is now known as the Forbidden City in Beijing -- and took charge of the palace's riches.

He later turned over control of the palace, the court and the emperor's living quarters to the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) which overthrew the imperial rulers in 1911.
Read entire article at AP