Palace Museum to set up emergency center

Palace Museum [Photo/China.org.cn]

A renovation project has started at Beijing’s Palace Museum, which will include the establishment of an emergency center, according to a press release from the museum.

The project will see the museum’s heating system fixed, and an emergency response office that will ensure safety at the complex during peak season.

Every year since 2012, more than 15 million people have visited the museum, also known as the Forbidden City. The number of visitors in 2016 hit 16 million.

The museum began to limit visitor numbers to 80,000 daily in June 2015, preventing extreme peaks in number of visitors.

The project will also see several managing offices built to ensure the safety of infrastructure and cultural relics.

The offices will monitor the museum’s facilities and its over 1.8 million artifacts.

In the museum’s 170,000-square-meter wooden building complex, there are 65 monitors and more than 2,300 surveillance cameras.

The project is scheduled to be completed in June 2019.

In 2020, the former imperial palace will celebrate its 600th anniversary. The museum has been a UNESCO World Heritage Listed site since 1987.