Nantou Old Town

Xin'an Old County Seat

AreaNanshan and Shekou: Shenzhen Bay, the Ferry Port and Nantou Old Town

NANTOU OLD TOWN (XIN'AN OLD COUNTY SEAT) · NANTOU GUCHENG

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VERIFIED2026.09.23

Nanshan and Shekou: Shenzhen Bay, the Ferry Port and Nantou Old Town · 22.546°N 113.916°E

No ticketingClosure day

The ground Shenzhen was administered from for most of the last seventeen hundred years, and since 2020 a redeveloped design quarter built on top of it. The rampart is real: Nanshan district's cultural bureau dates the surviving walled town to 1394, when it was the garrison seat of the Dongguan Guard, and Guangdong province listed the wall as a provincial protected monument in July 2002. The south gate still stands at its original height, 10 m wide and 4.5 m high, with the two characters Ningnan cut in seal script into the stone above the arch.

Before you goOfficially it is a national tourism and leisure quarter; in plain terms it is a rebuilt historic quarter, not a preserved old town. The wall, the south gate, the Dongguan guildhall, the Wen clan shrine, the foundling house and some forty Qing and Republican-era Cantonese houses are genuinely old, while the Xin'an county magistracy is a reconstruction built during the renewal; the rest is a 2019-2020 regeneration of an urban village, done by the district government with Vanke as executor, with the core rebuild deliberately capped at 30% of the area. If you arrive expecting Pingyao you will be disappointed, and if you arrive expecting a well-made contemporary shopping street with real archaeology at its edges you will not be. Two practical warnings: the museum keeps short hours and closes on Mondays, while the street stays open late, so a Monday evening visit gets you the shops and none of the history; and the lanes are narrow, so this is a walking visit with a taxi drop at the gate. Something wrong here? Tell us →

Hours · Tickets · Booking+ Add to trip

AdmissionNo ticketingFree to enter; shops and museums priced separatelySource ↗

HoursStreets open; museum Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00Source ↗

ClosedMuseum closed Mondays, except major public holidaysSource ↗

IDNone published

LandmarkNantou Old Town (Xin'an Old County Seat) (南头古城南城门 / 南头古城博物馆)

Address深圳市南山区南头街道较场路2号（museum）；古城在南头天桥以北（Nantou Subdistrict, Nanshan District）Source ↗Navigate ↗

EntranceMetro Line 12 to Nantou Ancient Town station, or Line 1 to Taoyuan and a short bus ride; buses stop at Nanxin Shennan Tianqiao and Nantou

Last verified 2026-09-23 Source: platforms and press

How to book

None for the streets or the museum

Paying on site

No entry ticket. Shops and restaurants take WeChat Pay and Alipay, both of which accept foreign cards; metro gates take foreign contactless cards since 10 September 2026.

Language

Museum enquiries 0755-26611170. The 1820 digital exhibition and the branch exhibitions are Chinese-first; English labelling is partial.

How to visit

Tap any line for the details.

Did you know

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