Handover Gifts Museum of Macao, Museum in Sé, Macao, China
The Handover Gifts Museum of Macao is a museum in the Sé neighborhood that displays commemorative gifts presented to mark Macao's return to China in 1999. The building has several floors of gallery space, with objects arranged in modern display cases and dedicated exhibition areas.
The building opened in December 2004 on the site where a temporary pavilion had stood during the 1999 handover ceremonies. Once those events ended, the pavilion was replaced by a permanent structure meant to keep a record of the transition.
The collection is made up of gifts presented by China's 56 officially recognized ethnic groups to mark Macao's establishment as a special administrative region. Each piece can be traced back to a specific community, reflecting the craft and artistic traditions of that group.
The museum is in the Sé neighborhood, not far from the Macao Museum of Art, and is easy to reach on foot from the surrounding area. Admission is free, so no advance booking is needed.
The museum and the temporary handover-ceremony pavilion that previously stood on the same site were both designed by architect Vicente Bravo Ferreira. The pavilion was demolished in August 2000 to make way for the Macao Cultural Centre square, and the three-storey museum, with 7,170 square metres of floor area, was built there from March 2003 and completed in October 2004.
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