Du Fu Thatched Cottage is the former residence of the great Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu, who lived in Chengdu. It is located at 37 Qinghua Road, Qingyang District, Chengdu City, Sichuan Province. Du Fu lived here for nearly four years and wrote over 240 poems. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, poet Wei Zhuang discovered the ruins of the thatched cottage and rebuilt it to preserve it. It has been repaired and expanded throughout the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties.
The Du Fu Thatched Cottage covers an area of nearly 300 acres and still retains the architectural layout that was renovated and expanded in the 13th year of Ming Hongzhi (1500) and the 16th year of Qing Jiaqing (1811). The screen wall, main entrance, main hall, poetry and history hall, firewood gate, and Ministry of Works Temple are arranged on a central axis, with symmetrical corridors and other ancillary buildings on both sides. The Thatched Cottage houses over 30000 volumes of various materials. The Du Fu Memorial Hall was established in 1955 and renamed the Chengdu Du Fu Thatched Cottage Museum in 1985.
On March 4, 1961, Du Fu Thatched Cottage was announced by the State Council of the People's Republic of China as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
Cultural relic value
The Du Fu Thatched Cottage in Chengdu houses over 30000 volumes of various materials and more than 2000 cultural relics. Including finely engraved, photocopied, and handwritten versions of Du Fu's poetry from the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, as well as various modern lead prints, 15 foreign translations, and over 120 Chinese engraved versions published in Korea and Japan, it is the most abundant and well preserved collection of Du Fu's life and works.