One of the famous exhibits in the Forbidden City is the Gallery of Clocks. It is located in the buildings south of the Hall for Ancestral Worship. In this gallery, there are eighty-two timepieces that are featured. Twenty-one of these timepieces were made in China and the other sixty-one were manufactured overseas. Twenty of the pieces now on view have never before been displayed to the public. The permanent exhibition has six sections showcasing timepieces from the Qing imperial workshops, Guangzhou, England, France, Switzerland, and other countries. Divided into two exhibition spaces, the gallery especially highlights clocks manufactured or acquired during the Qing dynasty.

The next exhibit is The Furniture Gallery which currently has over 6,200 pieces or sets of Ming and Qing furniture in its collection. Many of these works are rare and the most superb examples of certain furniture types from those periods. For many decades, these treasures of imperial furnishings have been stored deep within the museum’s collection storehouses. Beginning in 2015, the administration began to expand the areas accessible to the public and increase the number of items on view. At the time, the south storehouses were designated as an exhibition space for court furniture. After almost three years of planning and renovation, the south storehouses were opened in the fall of 2018 as a modern space for storing and showcasing exquisite examples of dynastic furniture.

The qin, or seven-string zither, is one of China’s oldest musical instruments, and an important part of the country’s traditional culture of rites and music. In this exhibit, The Lingering Voice of the Sages: The Culture of Qin, it houses the world’s finest collection of qin. The Palace Museum has a qin collection of eighty-eight pieces from the Tang, the Song, the Yuan , the Ming, and the Qing dynasties, forming a complete series of fine instruments across time and thus giving a relatively complete picture of the instrument’s development. This exhibition displays various kinds of related materials, giving visitors a view of qin culture from all angles.