Gansu Provincial Museum

Established in 1939, the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou houses over 350,000 artifacts, including the renowned Flying Horse of Gansu. Its exhibitions cover history, natural science, Silk Road civilization, Buddhist art, and paleontology, offering visitors a deep insight into the region’s cultural and natural heritage.

Planning your visit

The Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou holds one of the most reproduced objects in China: the Flying Horse of Gansu, a small bronze from an Eastern Han tomb showing a galloping horse balanced on one hoof, which rests on a swallow in flight. It became the emblem of Chinese tourism, and seeing the original — much smaller than the copies suggest — is the reason many visitors come.

Around it, the museum covers Gansu's position as the corridor through which the Silk Road ran west from the Chinese heartland toward Central Asia. Exhibitions span Silk Road civilisation, Buddhist art from the cave temple complexes along the route, painted neolithic pottery from the Majiayao culture, and palaeontology including mammoth and rhinoceros fossils from the region.

Lanzhou is usually a transit point for travellers heading toward Dunhuang and the western corridor, and the museum makes that route comprehensible before you travel it.

Bookable options are mostly day tours combining the museum with Lanzhou's other attractions: hand-pulled ramen making, the city's famous local dish, and the Yellow River waterfront. Others extend to the Danxia landform scenic areas. Current availability is shown below.