The Palace Museum will partner with technology company Alibaba Group to promote cultural products and sell entry tickets to the museum online now.

The museum, which is commonly known as the Forbidden City, will also open stores on Tmall.com and Alitrip.com, two sites run by Alibaba, it announced in Beijing on Wednesday.

Previous online shops of the museum on other e-commerce platforms focused on popular tourism souvenirs, but the new store on Tmall will showcase wider cultural items, museum director Shan Jiaxiang said.

People who buy tickets via Alitrip will no longer need to get paper tickets at the gates of the museum, which sees more than 15 million annual tourists. Visitors can enter the premises by just swiping their identity cards.

Alibaba has more than 400 million active users across its online platforms.

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