Forbidden City to close on Monday afternoons

The Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, will be closed every Monday afternoon from Jan. 1 to March 31, 2013, the museum stated yesterday.

Ticket sales will stop at 11:00 a.m, visitors will not be admitted after 11:10 a.m., and the museum will close at 12:00 a.m.

However, the museum will be open the whole day (8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.), as usual, on Feb. 11, the second day of the Spring Festival holiday.

The new timetable will be applied to the following Mondays: Jan. 7, 14, 21, 28; Feb. 4, 18, 25; and March 4, 11, 18, 25.

Historic and cultural heritage artifacts, as well as several of the ancient buildings, will undergo maintenance and repair when the museum is closed.

Some 182,000 people visited the Forbidden City on Oct. 2 of last year, during the National Day holiday. This set an all-time high, not only for the former imperial palace in the heart of Beijing, but for any museum in the world, Director of the Palace Museum Shan Jixiang said.

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