The Stele Forest Museum of Xi'an is a museum of art mainly for storage, research and display of steles, epitaphs and carved stone stature. It was a continuation of the ancient construction of the Confucius Temple in Xi'an, based on the more than 900 year old "Stele Forest of Xi'an".
The Stele Forest began to be built in 1087 (the 2nd year of the North Song Zhezong Ere). It was maintained and expanded constantly during past dynasties of Jin, Yuan, Ming, Qing and the Minguo period, so the stored stones were increasing day after day. In 1961, it was listed in the first batch of major national units of cultural relics that should be protected by the State Department. It stores almost 3000 epitaphs and steles from the Han Dynasty till now, 1089 of them have been exhibited. People will gasp in admiration to the steles here which seems like a forest, for their gathering together all kinds of styles of characters written by famous specialists: Zhuan (seal), Li, Kai (regular script), Xing and Cao.
The Xi'an Stele Forest Museum stores voluminous artworks which possess not only eximious value of handwriting and art, but also rich cultural connotation. So they're praised as "the treasury of the oriental culture", "the gathering of the art of handwriting", "the palace of the fine carved stones of the Han Dynasty and the Tang Dynasty", and "the stack room of the most ancient carved stones in the world". The Stele Forest has become an important part of the world cultural treasury, and an important window for developing the traditional culture of our motherland.

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