Bell Tower and the Muslim Quarter

The largest and best-kept of the quarter's mosques and one of the four great mosques of China: five courtyards in a row, Ming and Qing halls, a pagoda for a minaret and a wooden 'Phoenix Pavilion', with an inscription dating the foundation to 742 — a mosque built entirely in the Chinese temple idiom, which is why it is worth an hour even if you have seen mosques elsewhere. A working mosque: non-Muslim visitors pay a small ticket for the courtyards and stay out of the prayer hall; Friday midday prayer and Ramadan change what you can see. The visitor rules below are platform figures; we have not been able to confirm them with the provincial Islamic association.

Not one street but the Hui neighbourhood behind the Drum Tower: Beiyuanmen, Beiguangji Street, Xiyangshi, Dapiyuan, Huajue Lane, Sajinqiao and the lanes between, with around ten mosques and the Great Mosque at its heart, where a Muslim community has lived and cooked for centuries. Beiyuanmen, the 545-metre main street from the Drum Tower arch, is the tourist face: skewers, persimmon cakes, pomegranate-juice presses and the queues. The food is halal by default (lamb, beef, no pork), which is the single most useful thing to know about it: for travellers who avoid pork it is the easiest eating in China; for everyone else, note that the classic pork roujiamo lives outside the quarter. Free, open all day, no ticket; the quarter is a living religious community, not a food court.

The 1384 Ming tower on the roundabout where the four main streets of the walled city meet: the zero point of Xi'an, moved to this spot in 1582 when the city's centre shifted, and the building every address in the old town is measured from. You reach it only by underpass from the corners of the roundabout; upstairs is a small exhibition, a bell-chime performance and a walk-round balcony over the traffic. Run jointly with the Drum Tower, 250 m west, by one municipal museum: ¥30 each or ¥50 for both, sold on the museum's WeChat official account (advance booking is compulsory on holidays; on ordinary days the gate sells tickets, by a 2024 listing), open to 21:30 in the long season for the lit-up view.

The one door on Beiyuanmen that leads somewhere quiet: a Ming-Qing official's courtyard house of the Gao family — 86 rooms around a string of courtyards, carved brick and lattice, now run as a small classical-costume museum with an hourly shadow-puppet show and a teahouse. The tourism bureau lists it as a 3A site at No. 200 Beiyuanmen; platform listings give the museum ticket as ¥15 with the puppet show ¥30 extra, or ¥30 for both, with a WeChat official account for booking and a walk-in desk. Twenty minutes of calm in the middle of the food street, and the only place in the quarter to see shadow puppets, the Shaanxi folk art, performed daily.

The north-south street on the western edge of the Muslim Quarter, 600 m west of Beiyuanmen and a world away from it: no lanterns, no touts, a breakfast trade of beef-ball hulatang, youcha with fried dough, and steamed dumplings from before 7:00, then a night market of skewers and cold noodles for the neighbourhood. This is the entry for anyone who has read that Beiyuanmen is a tourist trap and wants to know where to go instead. Metro Line 1 Sajinqiao station is at its north end; no ticket, no hours beyond the stalls' own.

The Ming-dynasty Taoist temple of the city god, founded in 1387 as the 'capital' city-god temple for the north-west, on West Avenue between the Drum Tower and the mosques — the largest and highest-ranked old temple complex left in Shaanxi (platform description). It is reached through a lane of stalls that was the city's household-goods market for a century. Free, open daily, with real incense and a Quanzhen Taoist community; the Lunar New Year temple fair here is on the national intangible-heritage list. It sits on the quarter's southern edge, so it is the Han-Chinese counterpoint to the mosques a block north.

The 1380 Ming Drum Tower, four years older than its Bell Tower twin and 250 m west of it across the square — the biggest drum tower in China, with a row of two dozen drums on the upper terrace, a short drum performance, and a north face that opens straight onto Beiyuanmen, the main street of the Muslim Quarter. That is its real role for a visitor: the gate between the axis of the Ming city and the Hui streets behind it. Same museum, same ¥30 / ¥50 combo, same long-season hours to 21:30 as the Bell Tower.

The three brick villas on Jianguo Road where Zhang Xueliang lived in 1936 and where, in December, the kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek was held and the united front against Japan negotiated — the city end of the story whose country end is the Bingjian Pavilion at Huaqing Palace. Free, run by the provincial cultural bureau with a real website: 9:00-17:00, last entry 16:30, closed Mondays except public holidays, no booking needed, one of the three villas closed for works in 2026. A quiet, well-labelled museum for anyone who wants the twentieth century in a city that sells the Tang.