Fifty-eight frescoes, 14 statues and five repaired Buddha heads from the Tianti Mountain Grottoes have been exhibited at the Wuwei City Museum in northwest China's Gansu Province since last September.
The exhibition has attracted over 75,000 tourists to Wuwei City so far this year.
The Tianti Mountain Grottoes were first built in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), and its relics were relocated in the 1950s to make way for local reservoir construction. In 2006, most of the relocated relics were brought back to the mountain.
A restoration project on relocated frescos and colored statues was launched in 2014 and completed last November.
It took the researchers about seven years to restore murals of more than 300 square meters and about 70 statues from the caves.
Due to the unique mountain formation and its rock mass consisting of sandstones and conglomerates, the grottoes can easily crack and flake, compounding the restoration difficulties.
The Tianti Mountain Grottoes are under state-level protection.
Produced by Xinhua Global Service
