ĐÀ NẴNG — The central city will relocate the Đà Nẵng Museum from 24 Trần Phú Street to the old centre of the Đà Nẵng People’s Committee on 42 Bạch Đằng Street in 2020.

Director of the city’s Culture and Sports Department Huỳnh Văn Hùng said the removal of the museum will begin just after the decoration of the old buildings on Bạch Đằng Street, located 200m from the current site.

Hùng said the museum, which was built on the Điện Hải Citadel - a newly recognised National Special Relic site, and other new buildings had destroyed the structure of the 1813-built Citadel.

Director of the Đà Nẵng Museum Huỳnh Đình Quốc Thiện said the new museum space at 42 Bạch Đằng Street will display exhibitions curated from the museum’s 24,000 items and documents. The new space will be larger than the current museum and include both indoor and outdoor exhibition areas.

Thiện said the old buildings at 42 Bạch Đằng Street – where was used a headquarters of the city’s People’s Committee from 1975 to 2013 – will be restored to create a large pedestrian area connecting the Điện Hải Citadel, the city’s library, the new 37-storey administrative centre building and a section of the Hàn River bank.

“We have planned to decorate the old buildings on Bạch Đằng Street, which are about 118 years old, to display antiquities, paintings, exhibits and ancient documents from the old museum at 24 Trần Phú,” Thiện said.

“The proposed new museum site will be walkable from the Điện Hải Citadel, currently under restoration, to the new administrative building and crossing sections of four streets of Quang Trung, Lý Tự Trọng, Nguyễn Chí Thanh, Trần Phú and Bạch Đằng Street on a total of 10ha,” he added.

Thiện said the design of the new location of Đà Nẵng Museum would create a pedestrian square for pedestrian and visitors.

The current two-storey Đà Nẵng Museum, which was built on the main foundation of the Điện Hải Citadel, has been as one of the most visited sites in Đà Nẵng with an average 600 visitors each day.

Đà Nẵng has 50 historical sites and 18 national historical monuments included in the city’s restoration project for 2016-20. — VNS