Kaifeng Museum

Established in 1962, Kaifeng Museum houses over 80,000 cultural relics, including bronze ware, ceramics, calligraphy, paintings, and stone carvings, reflecting the rich heritage of Kaifeng.

Planning your visit

Kaifeng was the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, and for a period around the year 1000 it was probably the largest city in the world — a commercial metropolis of a million people, famously depicted in the scroll painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival. Almost nothing of it survives above ground, because the Yellow River has buried the city under silt repeatedly, with successive Kaifengs stacked one above another beneath the modern streets.

The museum holds over 80,000 objects covering that history: Song ceramics, bronzes, calligraphy, painting and stone carving, alongside archaeological material from the buried city layers. Kaifeng's small Jewish community, established by Silk Road traders and largely assimilated by the nineteenth century, is documented through inscribed stelae — a genuinely unusual holding.

The city today trades heavily on its Song heritage with reconstructed quarters and night markets.

Kaifeng is around forty minutes from Zhengzhou by high-speed rail. Allow two hours. Bookable options include day trips from Zhengzhou with incense craft and Song heritage themes. Current availability is shown below.