Forest of Stone Stelae Museum Travel Guide

Brief Introduction
Housed in Xian Confucius Temple, Forest of Stone Stelae Museum holds over 1000 stone stelae dated from Han to Qing Dynasties (From 206 B.C to 1911 A.D) in Chinese history, including the nine Confucian classic and some exemplary calligraphy.

Stelae are huge stone slabs which depict important calligraphic writing at ancient times. Located in the Confucian Temple on Sanxue Jie in Xian, Forest of Stone Stelae Museum was initially established in 1087 AD when some precious stone stelae were moved here for safe keeping.

Today, this is a professional art museum which collects, studies and displays various stelae and stone sculptures. Its contents can be divided into four groups: works of literature and philosophy, historical records, calligraphy and pictorial stones.

At the Room One, you can see "the Kaicheng Stone Classics", which contains twelve lections caved on 114 stelae. The lections include "the Book of Changes", "the Book of History", "the Book of Songs", "the Analects of Confucius" and some others of this kind. These are the must-read books for the intellectuals of the feudal society.

Room Two mainly displays the stone tablets written by the calligraphers during the Tang Dynasty (618-907). It has the collection of the masterpieces of the famous calligraphers as OuYang xun, Yan Zhenqing, Wang Xizhi and Liu Gongquan Nestorian Tablet is the most useful material for experts to study the cultural exchanges between the Tang Dynasty and the other states.

The calligraphy-collection, which is of great importance is showed in Room Three. As a traditional art, calligraphy occupies the same position of importance as the painting in the history of Chinese art. In China, the scripts are classified into five categories: seal script, official script, regular script, running-hand and cursive-hand. Through these tablets, you could learn much about the evolvement of the Chinese haracters.

Painting Stones in Room Four were engraved with historical records. You could see the portraits of Confucius and Bodhidarma on some and the allegorical pictures and texts written to appear like pictures on others.

Features
Forest of Stone Stelae Museum is the first and largest art treasure museum in the number of collection of China´s ancient stelae.