China Grand Canal Museum

The China Grand Canal Museum is dedicated to the Grand Canal, the 1,797-kilometre waterway linking Beijing and Hangzhou, sections of which — including the Hangzhou stretch — were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2014. Located in Gongshu District beside the canal's southern terminus, the museum opened in 2006 and underwent a major renovation and reopening in 2021. The permanent collection covers the canal's construction history, beginning with early sections dug during the Sui dynasty (605-610 CE) under Emperor Yang and later extensions during the Yuan-dynasty reunification of the full Beijing-Hangzhou route in the 13th century, through Ming-Qing grain-transport administration and 20th-century modernization. Exhibits include scale models of canal locks and barges, excavated ceramics and coins recovered from canal-side sites, historic photographs of Hangzhou's canal docks, and multimedia displays reconstructing canal-town life. The curatorial layout proceeds chronologically across multiple floors, from the canal's Sui-dynasty origins to its continued role in contemporary freight transport, framing the canal as China's oldest engineered transport corridor still in active use.