Xi'an travel guide

Top 10 sights in Xi'an

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   1© The original uploader was Bobak at English Wikipedia. · CC BY 2.5

   Chang'an

   The capital of the Western Han and the Tang, and at times the largest city in the world, of about a million people inside eighty-four square kilometres — six times the area of the present walled city. The Silk Road began at its western gate.

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   2© 長安城根喚朱雀 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Great Mosque of Xi'an

   A mosque founded by tradition in 742, laid out like a Chinese temple in courtyards with a pagoda-like minaret and no dome, and among the oldest in China. It is hidden in the lanes behind the Muslim Quarter and still in daily use by the Hui community.

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   3© Alex Kwok · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Giant Wild Goose Pagoda

   A brick pagoda of 652, rebuilt to seven storeys and sixty-four metres, put up to hold the sutras Xuanzang brought back from India after sixteen years of travel — he translated them in the temple below. The square in front runs Asia's largest musical fountain at night.

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   Banpo

   A Neolithic village of the Yangshao culture occupied from about 4500 BC, found in 1953 and preserved as an excavated site under cover. House floors, kilns and a cemetery are shown in place, along with the painted fish-motif bowls the culture is known for.

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   Small Wild Goose Pagoda

   A brick pagoda of 707 at Jianfu temple, originally fifteen storeys and now thirteen after earthquakes — one of which is said to have split it in two and another to have closed the crack. The Xi'an Museum shares the grounds.

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   6© xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0

   Fortifications of Xi'an

   The Ming city wall of 1370, fourteen kilometres round and twelve to fourteen metres thick at the base, and the most complete city wall surviving in China. Bicycles are hired at the South Gate to ride the full circuit on top, which is the best two hours in Xi'an.

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   7© Gzy.29 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Epang Palace

   The site of the palace Qin Shi Huang began west of Xi'an and never finished — his death stopped the work and the Han histories made it a byword for imperial extravagance. What survives is a vast rammed-earth platform rather than a building.

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   8© xiquinhosilva · CC BY 2.0

   Daming Palace

   The Tang imperial palace, seat of the emperors for over 220 years and about four times the size of the Forbidden City. It was destroyed at the end of the dynasty; the platform of the Hanyuan audience hall and the excavated street plan now form a national heritage park.

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   9© 蒋亦炯 · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Stele Forest

   A museum holding over three thousand inscribed stone stelae from the Han to the Qing, and the central collection of Chinese calligraphy. The Nestorian Stele of 781, which records a Christian church in Tang Chang'an, is among the most studied objects in China.

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    Bell Tower of Xi'an

    A Ming bell tower of 1384 standing at the exact centre of the walled city where the four main streets meet, on a base of thirty-six metres square. It was moved a thousand metres to its present site in 1582 and is lit at night.

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Popular tickets & tours in Xi'an

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   1© Virgil Guo · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tang Paradise

   A theme park of 2005 recreating a Tang imperial garden beside the site of the original Furong Garden, with pavilions, a lake and a large evening water and light show. Tang costume rental in the surrounding streets belongs to the same industry.

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   2© BrokenSphere · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Drum Tower of Xi'an

   A Ming drum tower of 1380, the largest surviving in China, paired with the bell tower a few hundred metres away — bells rang the dawn and drums the dusk. The Muslim Quarter's food street begins directly behind it.

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   3© Jason22 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Haojing

   One of the two settlements that formed the Western Zhou capital, on the Feng river southwest of Xi'an, established in the eleventh century BC. Its site has been excavated since the 1930s and produced bronze hoards and chariot burials.

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   4© Liuxingy · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Shaanxi History Museum

   The provincial museum, opened in 1991, holding about 370,000 objects from a province that was the imperial heartland for a thousand years. Its Tang gold and silver and the removed tomb murals are the strongest parts; free tickets must be booked and go quickly.

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   Tomb of An Jia

   The tomb of a Sogdian nobleman, An Jia, of the Northern Zhou period between 557 and 581, excavated at Xi'an in 2000. Its carved and gilded stone couch shows him hunting and feasting with Turkic khagans — the best visual record of Sogdian life in China.

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   6© Emcc · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Daci'en Temple

   The temple beneath the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, founded in 648 by the crown prince in memory of his mother, and where Xuanzang directed the translation of the sutras he brought from India. It is treated as the cradle of East Asian Yogācāra Buddhism.

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   7© David Stanley · CC BY 2.0

   Xi'an Museum

   Museum in Xi'an opened in 2007 around the Small Wild Goose Pagoda of 707. It holds 130,000 objects from the Zhou to the Tang, among them Tang tomb figures and seals.

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   8© Kcx36 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Qinglong Temple

   A temple founded in 582, and the centre of Esoteric Buddhism in Tang Chang'an, where the Japanese monk Kūkai studied under Huiguo before taking Shingon back to Japan in 806. Japanese donors funded its reconstruction, and its cherry trees are the city's spring attraction.

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   St. Francis Cathedral of Xi'an

   The Catholic cathedral of Xi'an, begun in 1716 and finished in 1727, in a Chinese-roofed building on Wuxing Street. It survived the suppression of the Jesuit mission and is the seat of the diocese.

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    10© 猫猫的日记本 · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Guangren Temple

    A Tibetan Buddhist temple in Lianhu district, founded in 1705 on the Kangxi emperor's order as a staging house for Tibetan and Mongolian envoys travelling to Beijing. It is the only Tibetan Buddhist temple in Shaanxi.

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