Opened in 1897, the Imperial Museum was created to preserve Kyoto's cultural treasures, threatened by the Emperor's own desire to modernise the city. Now a National Museum, the old building hosts temporary exhibitions, while a more recent wing (2014), called the Heisei Chishinkan, displays pieces (12 000 in total, presented in rotation) which brilliantly sum up Japan's wide-ranging artistic history: archaeology, ceramics, sculpture, calligraphy, textiles, lacquerware etc.