North of the Wall: Daming Palace and the Han capital

The footprint of the Tang dynasty's main palace — 3.2 km² north of the railway station, rebuilt in 2010 as a park over the excavated foundations: a free outer park of lawns, the Taiye lake and the palace-wall line, and a ticketed core around the Danfeng Gate (a modern shell over the Tang gate's earth, with a site museum) and the Hanyuan Hall terrace, the throne-hall platform you can climb for the view over the whole ground plan. A World Heritage site on the Silk Roads listing and a 5A park on the tourism bureau's list. Metro Lines 2 and 4 stop at its gates — but at different gates, which trips people up.

The tomb of the Western Han emperor Jing (d. 141 BC) on the airport road north of the Wei River — and the answer to 'is there a quieter Terracotta Army': an underground hall built over the emperor's burial pits where you walk on glass above rows of naked, armless clay figures (their wooden arms and silk clothes rotted away), thousands of them, plus animals, granaries and the archaeological museum with the best of the finds. Real-name online ticket (¥70 in season, ¥55 December-February), entry on ID and the booking code, open every day; no metro — a bus from Line 2's Library station, a taxi, or a stop between the airport and the city.

The provincial museum's second building, opened in 2024 across the Wei River in the new Qin-Han City, 666 m from Line 14's Qingong station — the Qin and Han galleries moved out here, with the 'Qin-Han civilisation' permanent show in a hall the size of the main museum. It is the plan B when the main museum's free tickets are gone: by the museum's own rules visitors enter with an ID document without booking, and non-mainland visitors 'use a passport… and staff complete the check on site'. Free, 8:30-18:00 with entry to 17:00, and from March to mid-November 2026 open on its usual Tuesday closing day. Line 14 also runs to the airport — this is the museum to do on the way in or out.

The Tang palace's main gate — five passages wide, the largest gate of its age — survives as rammed earth under a 2010 steel-and-panel shell that copies its outline; inside, walkways let you look down on the gate's foundations, the doorways and a section of the palace wall, with a small museum on the excavation. It is the front door of the ticketed core zone and faces the railway station's north square, so it is the first thing many visitors see of Xi'an. Same ticket and hours as the core zone.

The Western Han capital's main palace (4.8 km² of it, the largest imperial palace of ancient China), preserved as open fields west of the Han City Lake since the whole Han Chang'an site (36 km², in the first batch of national protected sites, 1961) was cleared of villages. What is left is earth mounds where the halls stood, the outline of the front hall on its terrace, rapeseed in spring and a lot of sky. Inscribed as World Heritage in 2014 as the starting point of the Silk Roads. Free, unfenced, 6:00-22:00, seven car parks and city buses to its gates — and almost no visitors, because there is nothing to buy and nothing standing.

A 6-km ribbon of water and park along the eastern moat line of the Han capital, between the Weiyang Palace fields and the North 3rd Ring Rd — the city's 2008-12 makeover of an old drainage channel into the place north Xi'an walks, runs and takes wedding photos. The 'Heavenly Han' plaza and its giant Emperor Wu statue stand at the south end, and the Han city wall's earth line runs along the west bank. Free, always open, on the free-park lists of Weiyang District; the easy, green way into the Han Chang'an story without the trek across the fields.

The platform of the Tang throne hall, 600 m north of the Danfeng Gate on the palace axis — a rammed-earth terrace 15 m high that has been re-faced and railed so you can climb it, and from the top read the whole 3.2 km² palace plan: the gate and the railway station south, the Xuanzheng and Zichen hall sites north, the lawns where the courtyards were. Nothing stands on it (the hall burned in the 880s), and that is the experience: the biggest empty stage in the city. Included in the core-zone ticket.

The old main station's north side, rebuilt in the 2020s so that its new north square opens directly onto the Danfeng Gate of the Daming Palace across the road — the one place where the Tang palace and the modern city face each other on an axis, and the first picture of Xi'an for anyone arriving by conventional train. Also worth knowing because the bus routes to the Terracotta Army moved away from here in 2019 and the touts did not. Free, always open, Metro Line 4 underneath.