Beginning in December, the Palace Museum will open free on the first Wednesday of every month for certain groups. This is a new measure to ease pressure on the world’s most visited museum.

At present, the number of visitors to the Palace Museum differs greatly between the peak season and the slack season. In 2002, the Palace Museum received 7 million visitors, while in 2014, the number reached more than 14 million. In recent years it has been a common thing for the museum to receive more than 10 million visitors. However, the distribution of visitors is uneven. The Palace Museum has implemented many measures, including one-year tickets and online discounted tickets for specific visiting periods, to try to deal with the problem.

Now, a new measure is being adopted. To stimulate tourism in the slack season and also to fulfill its role in social education, the museum is opening its doors to teachers, students, soldiers and the police, medical workers and volunteers for free on the first Wednesday of every month, with each specific group given a certain date to visit. The first batch of open days is as follows: December 3 for teachers, January 7, 2015 for college students, February 4, 2015 for soldiers and the police, March 4, 2015 for medical workers, and April 1, 2015 for volunteers.

Although it is free, people who are memeber of the groups concerned and interested in the museum should make an appointment on this website: http://gugong.228.com.cn or via this telephone number: 4006-228-228. On the free day, people should enter the museum through the "appointment process" by showing the relevant identification cards. One person can only apply for one ticket.

This article was edited and translated from 《故宫12月将首次设立免费日 为老师开免费场》, source: Beijing Daily, author: Liu Mian. 

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