Description of the attraction
The National Museum in Kyoto is one of the three most famous museums in Japan, built during the Meiji era in the late 19th century. Together with the museum in Kyoto, museums were also erected at this time, which are now called the Tokyo National Museum and the Nara National Museum. They were previously called imperial.
The main hall of the museum was designed by the architect Tokuma Katayama, a well-known adherent of Western trends in art. Therefore, the building was built of red brick in the French Renaissance style. Now it hosts various exhibitions. The construction of this part of the museum was completed in 1895. In the second half of the 20th century, the buildings of the Main Exhibition Hall, the gates, the ticket office building and the fence around the entire complex were declared an important cultural heritage of Japan.
Permanent exhibitions are housed in the new museum building, which was built in 1966. The exhibits of the museum are collected in three areas: fine arts (painting, sculpture, calligraphy), crafts (ceramics, lacquer, fabrics, metal products, including household and religious purposes, weapons and armor), archaeological finds.
Exhibits from the collection of the Kyoto National Museum represent not only Japanese art, but also the art of other Asian countries. In total, the museum's collection contains more than 12 thousand exhibits, half of which are presented for public viewing. In addition, 230 items of the museum collection have the status of national treasures of Japan. Many items were previously in ancient temples, imperial palaces or private collections. The museum also contains an extensive archive of photographic materials, numbering more than two hundred thousand storage units. The area of the museum complex is 50 thousand square meters. meters.
