Visitors to the Sanxingdui Museum in southwest China's Sichuan Province can now see how the ancient artifacts are restored, following the opening of its cultural relics protection and restoration hall on Saturday.

Covering an area of about 1,000 square meters, the new hall displays a collection of cultural relics, such as gold masks and bronze statues, offering tourists a chance to see the restoration work up close.

"The working area is displayed to the public through transparent windows," said Yu Jian, director of the museum's exhibition preservation department. "Visitors can experience and get to know the whole process of cultural relics restoration in an immersive way."

Some of the relics unearthed from sacrificial pits No. 3 to 8 at the Sanxingdui Ruins site will also be sorted, repaired and displayed in the hall, according to the museum.

The Sanxingdui Ruins site was first discovered in the late 1920s. In March, Chinese archaeologists announced important findings made at six newly discovered sacrificial pits at the site. More than 500 cultural relics were unearthed from the pits, including fragments of gold masks, gold foils, a bronze sacred tree and ivories.

The Sanxingdui Museum is located in the northeast corner of the Sanxingdui Ruins site. It exhibits various kinds of precious artifacts excavated from the site, among which the most famous ones are a 2.62-meter-tall standing statue, a 1.38-meter-wide bronze mask and the 3.95-meter-high bronze tree.

Read more: Sanxingdui Discovery