The museum, combining the elegance of the traditional redbrick architecture in Minnan, or southern Fujian province and the magnificence of the palace cluster at the Palace Museum, aims to provide a model for the possible collaboration between State-owned museums and the non-State-owned ones.

Covering an area of around 11,500 square meters, the museum consists of five main buildings within which there are exhibition halls to display cultural treasures from the Palace Museum, the collections of the Shimao group and these cultural relics related to the evolvement of the Maritime Silk Road. A special gallery for visitors allows them to interact with the digital version of the renowned Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) painting Silk Road Landscape.