Beijing Road and Thousand-Year Ancient Road Site 北京路与千年古道遗址

About Beijing Road and Thousand-Year Ancient Road Site

The street runs through the ground where the Qin general Ren Xiao founded the city in 214 BC, and it has stayed at the centre of Guangzhou through more than 2,200 years. In the summer of 2002, resurfacing work on the pedestrian street turned up sandstone slabs and old city-wall bricks. Two months of rescue excavation over an area of 420 square metres exposed eleven superimposed road surfaces running from the Tang to the Republic in the northern section, and five levels of foundations of the Gongbei gate tower, from the Northern Song through the Ming and Qing, in the southern section. Finding road remains and gate foundations stacked like this in the working centre of a living city is rare in Chinese urban archaeology. The district covered both openings with glazed hoods so that they could be looked into from the street, and the site opened in January 2003; it was listed as a Guangzhou municipal protected heritage unit in December 2008.

The northern opening is about 44 metres long and 3.8 metres wide, with the layers stacked more than three metres deep and belonging to five periods: Republic, Ming and Qing, Song and Yuan, Southern Han and Tang. The materials change as you read down, from stone paving near the surface through flat-laid and herringbone brick to the gravel of the lowest Tang surface. The bedding under the Song road held quantities of ceramic sherds traced to kilns in Hebei, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong, together with fragments of imported glass bowls and Song coins, which shows the street was already handling goods from foreign as well as domestic trade. Below the Tang levels, at about 3.5 metres, the excavators reached grey silt containing tiles of the Nanyue kingdom period, evidence that this stretch was low, watery ground before the Tang and was built up afterwards. The street itself was renamed Yonghan Road in 1920 when the city walls came down, and took its present name in 1966.

What to look for

• The northern glazed opening, about 44 by 3.8 metres, showing eleven stacked road surfaces from the Tang to the Republic
• The southern opening over five levels of the Gongbei gate tower foundations, Northern Song to Ming and Qing
• The change in paving material down the section, from stone through flat-laid and herringbone brick to Tang gravel
• The depth of the sequence, more than three metres of made ground under a street still in daily use

Location & getting there

Getting to Beijing Road and Thousand-Year Ancient Road Site

Choose a precise starting address and return transport stop. Access to individual buildings, performances or viewing platforms is separate from access to public streets.

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