Qujiang: Giant Wild Goose Pagoda and Datang Everbright City

The 2 km pedestrian street running south from the pagoda's South Square, rebuilt in 2018-19 as a Tang-dynasty stage set — gilded lanterns, LED skies, bronze poet statues, and after dark a rolling programme of street performers whose viral clips ('the tumbler girl', the 'Tang riddle men') made it China's most-visited night street. Free, open around the clock, no ticket; the shows run to a seasonal timetable the street posts on its WeChat official account. It is a crowd, not a heritage site: come for the lights and the people-watching, and know that the costume-photo stalls, paid performer selfies and juice counters are where visitors get fleeced.

The 64-metre brick pagoda built in 652 for the sutras the monk Xuanzang carried back from India, standing in the working Buddhist temple of Da Ci'en on the axis of the Tang capital — Xi'an's emblem and a World Heritage site on the Silk Roads listing. Two tickets: the temple (¥10 by 2025 listings; the 2018 provincial price ruling said ¥40) and the climb (¥25 in season, ¥20 in winter). The temple ticket is booked on the temple's WeChat mini-program, the climb ticket bought inside. The squares around it are free and are where most people actually see the pagoda: the north square with the fountain, the south square with Xuanzang's statue.

The provincial museum that explains why Xi'an was the capital for a thousand years (Zhou bronzes, Qin and Han, and the Tang galleries with the Hejiacun gold-and-silver hoard), in a 1991 Tang-style building on Xiaozhai East Road. Admission is free but ticketed, and it is the hardest free ticket in the city: released on the museum's WeChat official account at 17:00 five days ahead, one ticket per ID per day, capped at 10,000 a day during the current refurbishment. Passports are accepted for booking; the way round the scramble is the paid Tang murals gallery or special exhibition, since that ticket lets you into the main museum without a free-ticket booking (official rule).

The stepped plaza between Metro Lines 3/4 Dayanta station and the temple's north wall, with the pagoda framed at the top of a long cascade of fountain pools — the classic postcard of Xi'an and the free front-row seat for the city's music-fountain shows, which run at fixed times midday and in the evening and pull thousands on a warm night. No ticket, no gate, open all the time; the fountain's timetable is seasonal and posted locally, not on a page we could read — take the platform figures as a guide and be there half an hour early.

The square on the south side of the temple where the bronze Xuanzang stands with his staff, facing the pagoda built to hold the sutras he brought back — the free straight-on view of the pagoda, the head of the night street, and the quiet way in to the ruins park on the temple's east side that preserves the footprint of the Tang monastery (the temple today occupies a fraction of it). No ticket for any of it; the paid temple gate is on this side.

The site of the Tang monastery where the Japanese monk Kūkai received esoteric Buddhism in 805 before founding Shingon at home — which is why Japanese pilgrims come, why Japanese cities gave the cherry trees, and why the small site museum and the Kūkai memorial hall exist. Free, on a low ridge 3 km east of the pagoda by Metro Lines 3/5 Qinglongsi station; for most of the year you walk in, but in cherry season (mid-March to mid-April) it is capped at 25,000 a day and needs a free real-name booking on the site's WeChat official account, released three days ahead at 18:00. A quiet, genuine place with one crowded month.

The free lakeside park (opened 2008) on the site of the Tang capital's great pleasure lake, south of Tang Paradise and 1 km from Line 4 Datang Furongyuan station — 1,500 mu, a third of it water, landscaped by Zhang Jinqiu on the surveyed outline of the Qin-to-Tang pool. This is where the city runs, walks dogs and pushes prams; for a visitor it is the green hour between the museum and the night street, with the Tang city-wall ruins park and the Han Yao ruins park on its edges. No ticket, no gate, no crowd control on normal days.

China's first museum devoted to archaeology as a discipline: five galleries explain how sites are surveyed, excavated, dated and conserved before presenting the discoveries themselves. It is far south of central Xi'an beside the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology, with 4,891 objects or groups across the archaeology-history, cultural-sequence, discoveries and conservation sections. Admission is free but advance real-name booking is required through the museum's WeChat official account. The published booking instructions only describe second-generation Chinese ID cards and specified exempt groups; they do not publish a route for an ordinary foreign-passport visitor, so call before making the journey.

The one part of the Shaanxi History Museum that charges: a purpose-built gallery of original wall paintings cut from Tang imperial tombs — the polo match and the foreign envoys from Crown Prince Zhanghuai's tomb, the palace ladies from Princess Yongtai's — lit low and hung as they stood underground. For art-history readers it is the best ticket in Xi'an; for everyone else it matters because the museum's own rule says a paid murals or special-exhibition ticket, bought online, gets you into the main museum without the free-ticket scramble. Real-name, sold online in advance or at the desk inside the museum; the price is not printed on the guide page.

A 2005 theme garden built around a lake on the site of the Tang imperial pleasure grounds south of the pagoda — Tang-style halls and pavilions by the same architect as the Shaanxi History Museum, a water screen and light show after dark, dozens of costumed performances a day, and one of the city's big lantern fairs at New Year. It is new, not ancient, and the operator says so; what you pay for is the set at night. Entry ¥68 (half ¥60), or ¥120 with one show, by the garden's own 2026 notice (see tips), sold on the garden's WeChat mini-program and at the West Gate, with the usual free categories set out on the official ticket page. Metro Line 4 stops at the gate.