Forest of Stone Steles Museum

A museum of Chinese calligraphy and stone inscriptions occupying a former Confucian temple within Xi'an's old walled city. Founded on a collection begun in the eleventh century to preserve engraved classics, it holds thousands of steles across shaded halls and courtyards. Among its treasures are Tang tablets recording the Confucian canon, a famous stele documenting early Christianity in China, and masterworks of calligraphy. Visitors examine the towering inscribed slabs, whose crisp characters long served as models for ink rubbings.