Dalian Han Tombs Museum

Dalian Han Tombs Museum

The Dalian Han Tombs Museum is a cultural tourism attraction.

The Dalian Han Tombs Museum is located in Shagang Village, Yingchengzi Subdistrict, Ganjingzi District, and is the first museum in China dedicated to the site of a Han Dynasty tomb cluster. Covering an area of over 4,600 square meters with a building area of 2,600 square meters, the museum features functional areas for site displays, cultural relics exhibitions, and temporary exhibitions. The basic exhibition, titled “—Ancient Charm—Han Dynasty Tomb Culture in Dalian,” centers on the Han tombs in Dalian. Based on seven years of excavation results from the Han Dynasty tombs in Yingchengzi, the exhibition reveals the political, economic, and cultural characteristics of the Dalian region during the Han Dynasty through site reconstructions and displays of unearthed artifacts. It also highlights the close connections between the Dalian area and surrounding regions during that period.

The Dalian Han Tombs Museum is a landmark project in Dalian’s cultural development and heritage preservation efforts. Its completion and opening mark a significant achievement in the city’s cultural initiatives and hold great importance for promoting, educating about, and researching Dalian’s historical culture, as well as for building Dalian into a renowned cultural city.

The Dalian region has a long history, especially during the Han Dynasty, when its politics, economy, and culture saw unprecedented development. As early as the 1930s, the famous Eastern Han Dynasty mural tomb in Yingchengzi was discovered in the Dalian area, and its mural “Ascension to Heaven” holds a pivotal place in the history of Chinese art.

In the autumn of 2003, a large number of ancient tombs were discovered in the Yingchengzi area, marking a major archaeological find for Dalian. In conjunction with the city’s infrastructure development, rescue excavations of the Han tombs in Yingchengzi were launched. To date, more than 200 tombs have been excavated, yielding over 3,000 cultural relics. This area has become the most extensive Han Dynasty site and the richest in unearthed relics in southern Liaoning. The archaeological excavation has been recognized by leaders and experts from institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Liaoning Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, and has garnered significant attention both domestically and internationally.

As the first museum in China dedicated to the site of a Han Dynasty tomb cluster, the uniqueness of the Dalian Han Tombs Museum lies in its construction entirely within the central area of the original tomb cluster site. The shell-brick wooden-chambered tomb discovered here in 1999 is a joint burial tomb for a couple, covering an area of about 25 square meters. It yielded over 30 pieces of pottery and bronze ware, making it the largest tomb of its kind and the one with the most unearthed artifacts discovered so far in the Yingchengzi area.

The Han Tombs Museum comprehensively showcases various types of tombs from different historical periods of the Han Dynasty in the Dalian region, including shell tombs, shell-brick tombs, and brick-chambered tombs. It also houses nearly 300 precious cultural relics unearthed from the Han Dynasty.