The Palace Museum, one of the world's most visited tourist attractions, launched an expansion project on Wednesday in Beijing's Haidian District.

The expansion is the core part of a major cultural renovation program with an objective to enhance Palace Museum's capacity in exhibiting and conserving cultural heritage.

The on-site geological surveying and archaeological prospecting also kicked off at the expansion site, literally known as the "north section project of the Palace Museum."

The north section project will cover an area of 62 hectares, where exhibition halls, cultural heritage conservation workshops, warehouses and other facilities taking up 102,000 square meters, will be built.

The expanded section is expected to display more exhibits than the museum housed in the Forbidden City. 

According to Shan Jixiang, the curator of the museum, conservation and protection of cultural heritage will be the most important function of the north section upon its completion, and the process of conservation will be shown to the public.

The Palace Museum's general plan for renovation, approved by the State Council in 2013, has listed seven items for construction.

In addition to the north section project, the Palace Museum will build a new underground warehouse to protect relics in a controlled environment with custom humidity and temperature settings.

The new storage area is expected to be finished in 2020 when the Palace Museum celebrates its 600th anniversary. An underground passage will also be built to connect the two existing warehouses.

Home to the royal court between 1420-1912, the Forbidden City now houses more than 1.8 million collections of cultural relics.

(Top image: A sketch plan of the proposed "north section project of the Palace Museum." /Photo via weibo account of Chinanews.com)