Bronze sculptures in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam: 4000 years of beauty

A hall in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum echoes with the soft sounds of bells, and you feel as if you are on an acoustic journey through time. It is a recording that comes out at regular intervals from discreetly placed speakers. But the source of the sounds is in the room: nine Chinese Yong bells from the Zhou Dynasty, 2,800 years old. The loan from the Cologne Museum of East Asian Art is the only complete carillon of this type in a collection outside of China. In Amsterdam, it is united in a room with other instruments, including a powerful, perfectly formed Vietnamese drum from the fourth century BC and two Javanese bells from the ninth century AD.