Jingzhou 荆州

About Jingzhou

The old city’s gates and moat explain its defensive importance, while the museum brings the much earlier Chu world into focus through excavated objects. These periods should not be collapsed into a single Three Kingdoms story: the visible walls, archaeological collections and memorial buildings belong to different centuries. Start inside the historic town, then make a separate outing to the royal burial landscape beyond the urban area.

The city is named after the ancient province of Jingzhou (荆州), one of the nine provinces of ancient China, which itself took its name from the nearby Jing Mountains. Its urban core grew out of the separate settlements of Shashi and Jingzhou Town, historically known as Jiangling, whose names survive in the present Shashi and Jingzhou districts.

Jingzhou is a prefecture-level city in southern Hubei on the banks of the Yangtze River, covering 14,067 square kilometers with a topography rising from east to west and a dense network of waterways and lakes on the Jianghan Plain. Wuhan, the provincial capital, lies downstream to the east, Yichang and the Three Gorges lie to the west, Jingmen borders it to the north, and Yueyang and Changde, in Hunan, lie to the south.

According to the 2020 census the city had a total population of 5,231,180, with 1,068,291 residing in its built-up area. The prefecture-level city has jurisdiction over two districts, three county-level cities, three counties and one economic and technological development zone; suburban areas of the wider historical Jiangling region are administered by Jiangling County.

What to look for

• The historic town’s walls, gates and moat.
• The archaeological collections that reveal the earlier Chu and Han cultural world.

The surrounding area

A separate historic-city stay on the Jianghan plain, centred on the old city and its enclosure.

Location & getting there

Getting to Jingzhou

From the railway station or Shashi Airport, specify whether your accommodation is in Jingzhou’s old town or Shashi. For the historic core, use a named gate or Jingzhong Road destination rather than the prefecture-wide city pin.