Three Gorges Museum

Chongqing's Three Gorges Museum stands near Shangqingsi in Yuzhong District, facing the People's Great Hall across People's Square and beside the seat of the municipal government. It is one of the largest museums in China and a designated national first-class collection. Its predecessor was the Southwest Museum, founded in March 1951 and renamed the Chongqing Museum in 1955. A new building was approved in September 2000 and opened on 18 June 2005. Because the reservoir would drown whole sites under several metres of water, the state spent more than a billion yuan on rescue archaeology, and the museum became the main storehouse for the results.