The National Palace Museum () is an antique museum in Shilin, Taipei, Republic of China. It is one of the national museums in Taiwan, and has a permanent collection of more than 696,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 10,000 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 the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, share the same roots. The old Palace Museum in Beijing split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War, which divided China into the two regions of the Republic of China (Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) respectively. 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 Former Palace” (臺北故宮), while that in Beijing is known as the “Beijing Former Palace” (北京故宮).
