As we all know, in 1860, the British and French coalition forces once again invaded our homeland, plundering, trampling, and burning the Yuanmingyuan, and thousands of invaders not only snatched treasures, but also destroyed various buildings, and finally set fire to the garden. The fire burned for three consecutive days, and it was called the world's largest royal museum and art gallery, and it became a ashes and ceased to exist.
The Yuanmingyuan was built in the Kangxi period, covering an area of 3,000 acres, in the Yongzheng period, the pattern of the Yuanmingyuan was basically completed, it is conceivable that the project is huge and the time is huge. In the Qianlong period, and began to expand, rectify part of the garden landscape, add buildings, the Yuanmingyuan in this period reached its peak, the architectural complex is the most, the appreciation of the garden landscape is the strongest, the number of people living is the largest, such a royal garden with "garden of ten thousand gardens", even within three days, destroyed.
At that time, the British and French allies used various tools to carry and plunder nearly 1.5 million precious cultural relics, so there are still many treasures overseas. In the 1950s and 1960s, the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan after being burned down were protected, and measures for tree planting and protection were begun, and a special protection agency for the ruins of the Yuanmingyuan was established for maintenance and restoration.
Experts have also been very concerned about the cultural relics left behind in the Yuanmingyuan, on the one hand, the cultural relics lost overseas, as soon as possible to recover, the more famous twelve beast head bronze statue, now there are eight bronze statues back to the embrace of the motherland. On the one hand, archaeologists also searched for and studied the remains of cultural relics that were burned at that time.
A bronze elephant head was found, and although it was completely unrecognizable at the time of its initial discovery, its exact shape could already be seen after restoration. Experts were pleasantly surprised to find that this elephant head was very delicately made, smelted and fired from copper, and then carefully carved and patterned, indicating that the technology at that time was skilled and superb.
In addition, this elephant head also has the words written by the Jiaqing Emperor himself, which makes the value of the elephant head even more immeasurable! Over the years, our experts have spared no effort to conduct archaeological research on the cultural relics left behind in the Yuanmingyuan, and found many surprises, and the discovery and excavation of these cultural relics have been of great help to the society at that time for the study of our country, and also have an extremely important role in the construction of our spiritual civilization.