Two exhibitions showcasing items from the Palace Museum will be held at the Hong Kong Science Museum from December 7.

The exhibitions are jointly presented by the Leisure & Cultural Services Department and the Palace Museum.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam, Palace Museum Deputy Director Ji Tianbin, Science Museum Group Director Ian Blatchford, and Secretary for Home Affairs Lau Kong-wah attended the opening ceremony of the exhibitions today.

The Treasures of Time exhibition will display about 120 mechanical clocks and watches from the collection of the Palace Museum.

Most of the items were tributes from Europe presented by Western missionaries to the Qing court, while others were manufactured by local craftsmen in the Imperial Workshops of the Qing court and Guangzhou.

An 18th Century Europe workshop setting will be recreated with tools and equipment provided by the Science Museum, London, to show how craftsmen worked in the past.

Special features using the latest technology and animations have been created for visitors so they can learn about the principles of different time measuring tools.

The exhibition will run until April 10 next year.

The Landscape Map of the Silk Road exhibition will display a 30-metre-long and 60-centimetre-wide map.

The Landscape Map of the Silk Road was created as an imperial painting for the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming dynasty.

With more than 200 cities marked on the map, ranging from the Jiayu Pass in Gansu Province to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, it shows the Chinese had a clear understanding of the Silk Road as early as the 16th Century.

Interactive exhibits, models and maps of the Mainland and Hong Kong drawn in the 16th to 20th Centuries will also be featured at the exhibition, which will run until February 20.