China's Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, is to renovate the unfinished Western-style Hall of Water (also known as Yanxi Palace) into a hall to exhibit foreign cultural relics. It will be the first foreign cultural relics exhibition hall in China.
The Hall of Water is known under another popular moniker as the "crystal palace". It was built on a white marble base, with cast iron and glass walls and floors. The buildings inside the hall combine Chinese and Western style, which are incompatible with a Chinese architectural complex. The hall was intended that by its completion, water would be filled into a well surrounding the hall, so that people inside the pavilion could view swimming fish through the transparent glass.