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Fig. 1.<br />

The virtual recovery<br />

view of Daming Palace<br />

(635 AD); from www.<br />

damingpalace.com.<br />

Communication with the Relics in Oblivion:<br />

Studying the Musealization of “Daming<br />

Palace Open-air Museum” in China<br />

xianya xU, Politecnico di Milano<br />

In 904 AD, a tremendous war destroyed one of the most glorious<br />

royal palaces in the history of China, the Daming Palace (635 AD).<br />

During the following thousand years, it had been demolished and<br />

forgotten. When the archaeologists discovered the relic in the centre<br />

of Xi’an, in 1957, only pieces of loam walls left. Citizens didn’t notice<br />

that they were building their homes upon the royal palace, until<br />

they were restricted to do more constructions upon their lands. At<br />

that moment, the development of the area was delayed for reasons.<br />

On the one hand, due to the inadequate technology and academic<br />

knowledge on preservation, government hesitated to inaugurate the<br />

reservation project. On the other hand, the citizen who lived on<br />

this precious land hardly appreciated the value of these relics under<br />

their feet, they took those ruins as the barriers to impede their<br />

life improvement. The controversy between the preservation and<br />

citizen livings had been lasted for fifty years, till 2007 the project of<br />

musealization started. Now there stands an open-air museum with<br />

materialized culture treasure as well as a central park for the city,<br />

coving 32 hectors.<br />

Daming Palace was built in Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD), which<br />

is the climax era in the history of China (fig. 1). It represents the<br />

peak intelligence of that period. At that time, Xi’an area was named<br />

“Tang Chang’an”, and the population reached to 500,000. There<br />

were three palaces in that city at the moment: Taiji Palace (583<br />

AD), Daming Palace (625 AD), and Xinqing Palace (714 AD).<br />

Daming Palace was the most enormous and important among these<br />

three, it stood for the political heart of Tang Dynast, even the spirit<br />

of entire country. The Daming Palace was started in the spring of<br />

635 AD, by the second empire of Tang Dynast, Li Shimin (599-<br />

649 AD). In 626 AD, Li Shimin seized the throne by murdering<br />

his brothers and threatening his father empire, therefore, in the following<br />

years Li Shimin constantly felt guilty to his father Li Yuan<br />

(566-635 AD). He inaugurated the Daming Palace to the north<br />

115

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