A newly opened museum building in southwest China's Sichuan Province is highlighting China's progress in archaeological excavation, restoration and research of the Sanxingdui Ruins.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, visited the Sanxingdui Museum in Deyang City on Wednesday during his Sichuan inspection tour to learn about local progress in promoting historical and cultural inheritance and advancing eco-environmental conservation.

Located in the city of Guanghan, around 60 kilometers from the provincial capital Chengdu, the Sanxingdui Ruins are believed to be the remnants of the Shu Kingdom, dating back some 2900 to 4500 years.

With a construction area of about 54,400 square meters and a total investment of more than 1.4 billion yuan (about 196 million U.S. dollars), the newly built hall of the Sanxingdui Museum was officially opened to the public on Wednesday after nearly a year and a half of construction.

The exhibition area of the new building covers 22,000 square meters, where more than 1,500 pieces or sets of cultural relics are displayed in three thematic sections to present the cultural features and social development of the Shu civilization.

The Sanxingdui Cultural Relics Protection, Repair and Exhibition Center, officially put into operation in 2021, has been making contributions to the conservation and restoration of relics, as well as the archaeological research. It has working areas for researchers and visiting areas for the public.

Originally discovered in the late 1920s, the Sanxingdui Ruins have been dubbed as one of the world's greatest archaeological findings of the 20th century. In 1988, the Sanxingdui Ruins site was put under state-level protection.

Since 2020, a joint team of archaeologists from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, Peking University, Sichuan University and other research institutions and universities has carried out the excavation of six sacrificial pits at this site. They have so far unearthed about 13,000 items from the site.