The Palace Museum in Beijing. [Photo by Yan Daming/Asianewsphoto]

The Palace Museum signed an agreement with the local government in Xiamen on Monday to open a branch that will exhibit its foreign cultural relics on the Gulangyu Island in Fujian province.

Gulangyu, which is to the west of Xiamen, is considered a top tourist spot in southern China.

The museum in Beijing is home of 1,800 pieces of foreign cultural relics, including antique clocks, potteries and scientific instruments, mostly from 18th and 19th centuries, and most of them are former royal collections.

But due to its limited exhibition space, many items have never been seen by the public before.

Gulangyu, known for its Western-style villas built in the 19th and early 20th centuries, annually attracts more than 10 million tourists as a place with cultural symbols from both the East and West.

The new branch will likely open by the end of 2015.