The newly-completed exhibition hall at the world-renowned Sanxingdui Museum began trial operations on Thursday in Guanghan, southwest China's Sichuan Province.

Covering an area of nearly 55,000 square meters, it is currently the largest single exhibition building showcasing the cultural relics unearthed from historical sites in southwest China, with a size five times larger than any of the previous buildings at the Sanxingdui museum park.

The new hall houses more than 1,500 cultural artifacts, including pottery, bronze, jade and gold, with 600 of them being displayed for the first time. 

One of the most iconic exhibits in the new hall is the four-meter-tall bronze sacred tree. The giant bronze artifact, which ancient people once believed formed a link between Heaven and Earth, takes center stage in the new hall and is presented with a much greater visual impact than it did in the old hall. 

The bronze altar, which was discovered during excavation work last year, is the highlight among the newly-displayed exhibits. It is composed of three sections from top to bottom, with sculptures of not only human beings but also gods and animals, depicting a solemn sacrificial scene.

Multiple gold artifacts including a mysterious gold mask and a bird-shaped gold piece are meeting the public for the first time.

Featuring three themed sections – "Pursuing Dreams in the Century," "Majestic Capital" and "The World of Humans and Gods" – the exhibition hall utilizes a range of new technologies to "decode" the cultural features and social development of the Shu civilization and reveal the latest achievements in archaeological excavation and research.

The Sanxingdui Cultural Relics Protection, Repair and Exhibition Center, which was officially put into operation in 2021, has been making important contributions in the fields of conservation and restoration of relics, as well as archaeological research. It has working areas for researchers and visiting areas for the public.

Originally discovered in the late 1920s, the Sanxingdui Ruins have been dubbed as one of the world's greatest archaeological findings of the 20th century. In 1988, the Sanxingdui Ruins site was put under state-level protection.

Since 2020, a joint team of archaeologists from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, Peking University, Sichuan University, and several other research institutions and universities have carried out the excavation of six sacrificial pits at this site. They have so far unearthed around 13,000 items from the site.