Pingyao Ancient City 平遥古城

About Pingyao Ancient City

The city walls establish its compact outline, while South Street and the Rishengchang exchange house reveal the connection between street life and China's early remittance businesses. The county yamen adds a different perspective: the offices, courts and domestic spaces used to administer the town. Focus on a few interiors rather than treating every courtyard as interchangeable.

Pingyao has a recorded history of nearly 2,800 years; earthen ramparts were first raised at the site during the reign of King Xuan of the Western Zhou (827-782 BC). It belonged to Jin in the Spring and Autumn period and to Zhao in the Warring States period. The present walled city dates from the Hongwu era of the Ming dynasty (1370) and covers 225 hectares.

The city wall, built in the third year of the Hongwu era, retains six gate barbicans, four corner towers, seventy-two watchtowers and three thousand crenels; a section of the south wall collapsed in 2004, but most of the rest survives. Because its six gates place a head and tail at north and south and four legs at east and west, the city is nicknamed the Tortoise City. Within the walls, four main streets, eight secondary streets and seventy-two lanes are laid out in a grid centred on South Street, with government, temple and residential quarters arranged symmetrically according to the eight trigrams.

In 1997, UNESCO inscribed Pingyao Ancient City on the World Heritage List together with the nearby Shuanglin Temple (双林寺) and Zhenguo Temple (镇国寺), citing its value to world history, architecture and culture. The old city preserves close to 4,000 Ming and Qing dynasty residences and more than 300 historic sites and old buildings.

What to look for

• Rishengchang Exchange House, interpreting the remittance business that helped make Pingyao a financial centre.
• South Street and the city tower, followed by the county yamen's sequence of official and domestic courtyards.

Location & getting there

Getting to Pingyao Ancient City

Enter the historic centre at the South Gate for a route along Nanda Jie, also called South Street or Ming–Qing Street.

• The county yamen is on Yamen Street; confirm access separately for the walls and individual museums.