Worldwide and Cost-Free Access to the Geographically Scattered Materials From Dunhuang and Other Sites in Chinese Central Asia

The Mogao Caves are one of the most culturally significant Buddhist cave temple sites located in Dunhuang, Gansu Province, northwestern China. Notable for their large collections of religious and other secular manuscripts, large collections of such Dunhuang documents and artefacts are spread across major libraries, museums and research institutes throughout the UK, France, Germany, China, Japan and Russia. Established in 1994, the International Dunhuang Project (IDP) is a international collaborative effort to conserve, catalogue and digitise manuscripts, printed texts, paintings, textiles and other artefacts collected from Dunhuang and other various archaeological sites located at the eastern end of the Silk Road.