An exhibition of recent archaeological discoveries from the city of Xi'an in China's Shaanxi Province, including the gilt crown of a princess of the Tang Dynasty more than 1,000 years ago, opens in Bonn on Friday.

 

Visitors will see more than 200 pieces discovered in the funerary complexes and temple furnishings of the emperors and the aristocracy from Qin, Han and Tang dynasties.

 

"This is the largest such exhibition outside China," Zhao Rong, Director General of Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, told Xinhua on Thursday.

 

The show also marks 15 years of cooperation between Germany and China in the domain of the preservation of cultural heritage, he said.

 

Experts from Germany's Bavarian State Conservation Office and the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz, a city of west-central Germany, have worked closely with the Museum of the Terracotta Army in Lintong and Shaanxi Archaeological Institute in Xi'an on relic discovery and repair work since 1991.

 

The bronze water birds in the First Emperor's funerary complex, discovered and restored by German and Chinese experts, are on display at the exhibition.

 

For the first time outside Asia, one of the famous terracotta warriors of the First Emperor Qin Shihuang is being shown in its original coloring.

 

The exhibition will last until July 23, 2006, and seminars on how to repair and preserve the ancient relics will take place during the exhibition.

 

All the relics, taken to Germany on a special plane, were from the vast necropolis surrounding northeast China's Xi'an, capital of 13 dynasties in ancient times. Some of the pieces date back to the Zhou Dynasty in BC 1100.

 

Numerous tombs of kings and emperors, each of them surrounded by large numbers of ancillary tombs, can be found along a 180-km stretch of the Wei River valley and on the mountains surrounding the city.

 

(Xinhua News Agency April 21, 2006)