The only photographable cave from Xinjiang’s Kizil Grottoes 😅

📍 Humboldt Forum Museum, Berlin 🏛️Back home, special caves can cost a fortune, and you only get to see them for a few minutes, let alone take photos. At the Humboldt Forum, it’s free and you can snap away to your heart’s content. The exhibition hall was almost empty, offering a nearly exclusive experience. I had 15 minutes all to myself in the Kizil Cave 123, examining every detail of the murals. What an unforgettable time! Leaving the cave, I felt a mix of emotions. A century ago, our cultural relics were looted and taken abroad, and now, overseas, they can be seen and photographed freely, while back home… 🌟The Asian Collection at the Humboldt Forum Museum (formerly the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin) houses a vast array of artifacts from the Kizil Grottoes in Xinjiang, including murals, clay sculptures, and wooden relics. Among these, there are over 230 fragments of murals from the Kizil Grottoes. These murals mainly depict Buddhist Jataka tales, Avadāna stories, and the life of the Buddha, showcasing the Buddhist art style of ancient Qiuci region. 🧱The reason these murals are in Berlin dates back to the early 20th century and the so-called German expeditions to the Xinjiang region. Between 1902 and 1914, the German “Royal Turfan Expedition” made four trips to Xinjiang, conducting surveys and excavations at sites like the Kizil Grottoes. During the third and fourth expeditions, the team removed a large number of murals and brought them back to Germany. 📜These artifacts were initially housed in the Berlin Ethnological Museum, later moved to the Museum of Asian Art in Berlin, and are now displayed in the Humboldt Forum. Some murals were destroyed during World War II when Berlin was bombed, while others were taken by the Soviet Red Army after the war and are now stored in the Hermitage Museum in Russia. 🏰Additional relics come from other grottoes in the Xinjiang region, including the Bezeklik Caves, Kumtura Caves, Simsim Caves, Mazar Bahra, and the Buddhist temple ruins at Tumxuk. #Murals #Grottoes #KizilGrottoes #BerlinMuseumIsland #HumboldtForum