Seen from Space 2008
Xi'an, the ancient city formerly called Chang'an
You can see the rectangular streets surrounded by the moat in the upper half of the figure. The rectangle formed by this moat is 4.4km long in the east-west direction and 2.8km long in the north-south direction. Inside this moat, 15 to 18m-thick city walls can be found. The interior area of this city wall roughly corresponds to the Chang'an castle of the Sui and Tang dynasties. The present 12m-high city walls were constructed based on the 6m-thick castle walls of the Tang dynasty by accumulating bricks in the 14th century during the Ming dynasty. They are the only existing city walls that completely retain the old shapes in China. The walls have the east gate (Changle gate), the west gate (Anding gate), the south gate (Yongning gate), and the north gate (Anyuan gate), and each gate has some buildings such as watchtowers. Within the city walls are the buildings of the Shaanxi Provincial Government and the Xi'an Municipal Government, the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower built in the 14th century, and thick roads extending from the Bell Tower to the east, west, south and north gates. The Stele Forest Museum, called the treasure house of Chinese calligraphy, near the south gate, houses more than 80,000 cultural assets including more than 3,000 stone monuments from the Han dynasty to the Qing dynasty. Almost all the copies of Japanese calligraphy are engraved prints acquired from here. The lattice-shaped streets extend even beyond the city walls, and a wide ring road can be seen 2 to 3km outside of the circumvallation. Sculptures indicating the starting point of the Silk Road stand at the end of the upper left of the figure. The Shaanxi History Museum, which holds some 370,000 cultural assets from prehistoric times to the Qing dynasty, is located south of the South gate. To the southeast of the museum is the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in the Da Ci'en Temple complex. The pagoda was erected in 652 to house the many Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures, Buddhist images, and similar items that Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang (602 to 664) brought back from India. Near the east gate is Xinqinggong Park, which was built at the site of Xinqinggong, a palace in the Tang dynasty, and there is a monument to Abe-no-Nakamaro (698 to 770) who was sent as the Japanese envoy to the Tang dynasty in China. The QingLong Temple in the lower right of the figure is the where Japanese priest Kukai (774 to 835) learned the tenets of esoteric Buddhism. Japan's Heijo-kyo Capital in the 8th century and the Heian-kyo Capital from the end of the 8th century to the 10th century were patterned after Chang'an castle in the Sui and the Tang dynasties; the major difference being that Heijo-kyo and Heian-kyo Capitals had no circumvallation.
Xi'an is defended by the Wei River, a branch of the Huang River, in the north and by the Qinling Mountains in the south. Xi'an was formerly called Chang'an (meaning "ever-lasting peace") and served as the capital of many dynasties from the Western (Former) Han dynasty (206 BC to 8 AD) until the Tang dynasty. The ruins of Chang'an (castle) in the Western Han dynasty are several kilometers northwest of downtown Xi'an and appear as green areas. Banpo Museum, where village ruins dating back about 6,000 years (the Neolithic era) were excavated, is located in the suburbs east of Xi'an, and the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor is found northeast of Banpo Museum. Xianyang, the Qin dynasty's (unified China in 221 BC; ended in 206 BC) capital, was established on the northern bank of the Wei River northwest of Xi'an, and the Xi'an Xianyang International Airport can be seen north of Xianyang. Additionally, the Imperial mausoleums of the emperors in the Western Han dynasty stand in a line of over 40km on the northern bank of the Wei River. Imperial mausoleums of the emperors in the Tang dynasty can be seen in the upper left of the figure.
The "Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor" was added to the World Heritage list of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1987. Huaqing Hot Spring with its scenic beauty lies at the foot of Mt. Lishan on the left side of the figure. The sixth Emperor Xuanzong (685 to 762) in the Tang dynasty spent a lot of time here with his concubine Yang Guifei (719 to 756).
Expanded images reveal that every mausoleum is shaped like a pyramid, the largest of which is the Maoling Mausoleum with a base of 250m in both of east-west and north-south directions. The tops of Yanling Mausoleum and Yiling Mausoleum are shaped like plateaus.
The mausoleum is surrounded by terraced fields that look like tree rings. On the west side of the mausoleum is a complicated ramifying deep ravine and a dam reservoir formed by utilizing the landform. Reference Site:  Homepage of the tourism administration of Xi'an
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