With its origins stretching far back into the Tang dynasty, the Stele Forest started in Chang'an when two groups of steles were carved - the Kaicheng Shi Jing and Shitai Xiao Jing steles. Today, the Stele Forest or Beilin Museum is located in Xi'an, China, and is a museum for steles and stone sculptures.

Housed in a former Confucian Temple, it has seen a burgeoning collection of steles since 1087 and boasts of 3,000 steles in the museum, divided into seven exhibitions halls. As the largest repository of steles in China, it was officially renamed the Forest of Stone Steles in 1992. Look out for the special ones such as an 18th-century stele portraying a Yangtze River flood control project and another which resembles a bamboo forest but are actually leaves and branches which form a poem.