China likes to think big. Just look at the Beijing Olympics, or the 30-foot statue of Confucius — who has become a symbol of the country's international cultural rebranding efforts — that was recently erected in Tiananmen Square. Now that politically freighted site is also hosting the country's latest architectural achievement, the National Museum of China, which began reopening to select audiences this weekend, and will welcome the public on April 1. Chinese officials claim that it is now the largest museum in the world.

With its three-and-a-half-year renovation and expansion completed, the museum now measures 2.07 million square feet — tripling its previous exhibition space, and surpassing the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which previously reigned as the largest museum at 2.05 million square feet.
(By point of comparison, the next-largest cultural institutions are the Hermitage at 1.4 million square feet and the Louvre at about 650,000 square feet.)

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Located on the east side of Tiananmen Square, the National Museum of China was first established in 2003 when the Museum of Chinese History and the Museum of Chinese Revolution merged. The massive renovation cost 2.5 billion yuan ($379 million). The reopened museum will have four stories with two more levels underground, for a whopping total of 48 exhibition rooms. Last February, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage transferred more than 390,000 cultural objects to the National Museum, bringing its collection past the one million-item mark, according to People's Daily. (In terms of collection size, the Met can boast over three million items, though only small number are on view at any one time.)

The museum will also be the first to have a professional in-house TV studio. Since the collection is not allowed to leave the museum for filming, the 6,500-square-foot studio will produce programs about the exhibitions and broadcast them live. Visitors will be able to access the content on their mobile devices.

An exhibition entitled "Art of the Enlightenment" is set for the reopening. It will be presented in collaboration with three major German institutions: Berlin's consortium of national museums, the Dresden State Art Collections, and the Bavarian State Picture Galleries. Works from Enlightenment period masters such as Friedrich, Füssli, Gainsborough, Watteau, Piranesi, and Goya will be on display for one year.

The museum is part of a large-scale enhancement of Beijing's historical center, where the National Center for the Performing Arts — a titanium-accented glass dome known as “The Egg” — opened in 2007. Currently the third-most-visited country in the world (after France and the U.S.), China hopes to take first place by 2015, as predicted by the U.N. World Tourism Organization, according to the Independent, and the renovated National Museum expects to welcome between eight to 10 million visitors per year.