Datong moves its Museum

Bldg No.3 of the Museum, joins the new cluster, on Oct 9 [Photo by Chen Xudong/dtnews.cn]

The move of Datong's City Museum has seen some progress after its start in July, with the largest and most difficult, technologically, of the movement of Buildings No 3, weighing 15,000 tons, moved to its new location, 206 meters east of the previous site on Oct 9.

The cluster of museum buildings also had to be rotated 90 degrees so that they face westward instead of south. The whole project was done entirely for the Museum's protection. It was built in 1959 and got in the way of a project to restore the old city walls, a idea that was proposed in 2009 by the city government to preserve the city's relics.

The problem was that the museum was within the zone of west city wall repairs. The city put the move to a vote asking the public for their opinion and asked a team of architects to do a comprehensive evaluation of the situation and came up with transport and rotation plan.

The Museum has been a landmark for many decades and the majority of people thought it a terrible thing to tear the building down. Typical of this outlook was Liu Jian, a 45-year-old local who said that people often met their friends right in front of the museum gate in the central square.

Now, with the move, the museum is happily coexisting with its neighbor the restored city walls.