Daming Palace National Heritage Park 大明宫国家遗址公园

About Daming Palace National Heritage Park

Daming Palace National Heritage Park (大明宫国家遗址公园) is a national archaeological site park in the north of Xi'an (西安), laid out over the ruins of the Tang dynasty's Daming Palace (大明宫). It covers about 3.5 km² and opened on 1 October 2010.

Emperor Taizong (唐太宗) began the palace in 634 as a summer residence for his father Li Yuan (李渊), naming it Yong'an Palace (永安宫); after Li Yuan died in 635 it became the Daming Palace. Emperor Gaozong (唐高宗), who found the older Taiji Palace (太极宫) too damp, enlarged it from 662 and moved the court there. Chinese Wikipedia counts 234 years as the seat of Tang government, until fire destroyed the palace in 896. The State Council listed the ruins in the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units in 1961, and in 2014 UNESCO inscribed them in the Silk Roads: the Routes Network of Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor.

The palace stood on the Longshou Plateau (龙首塬), inside walls about 7.6 km round enclosing some 3.11 km². Its halls ran along a north-south axis. Hanyuan Hall (含元殿), about 600 m inside the main gate, sat on a base 15.6 m above the ground, reached by the Dragon Tail Way (龙尾道), a 78 m approach of alternating steps and ramps. Further north came Xuanzheng Hall (宣政殿) and Zichen Hall (紫宸殿), the outer, middle and inner courts, a sequence Chinese Wikipedia traces in the three great halls of Beijing's Forbidden City. Beyond them lay the garden quarter around Taiye Pool (太液池).

Building the park took from 2008 to 2010. The area had been home since 1938 to refugees from Henan who settled north of the railway after the Huayuankou (花园口) dyke breach, and from the early 1980s heritage law barred large construction there. After the opening, many of the newly built replica buildings were pulled down, a step thought to serve the World Heritage bid. The reconstructed Danfeng Gate (丹凤门) now encloses and protects the ruins of the original gate, and conservation of the Hanyuan Hall platform, planned by China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage with UNESCO, ran from 1995 to 2003. Exhibition halls around the grounds show objects excavated on the site.

What to look for

• Danfeng Gate (丹凤门), the main south gate with five passages, rebuilt as a shelter over the original ruins
• Hanyuan Hall (含元殿) platform, base of the main hall where major ceremonies and the New Year and winter-solstice audiences were held
• The central axis north to Xuanzheng Hall (宣政殿) and Zichen Hall (紫宸殿)
• Taiye Pool (太液池) with Penglai Hill (蓬莱山), where gardens have been recreated from historical records
• Linde Hall (麟德殿), the largest secondary hall, used for banquets and foreign envoys, with its floor plan restored on the site
• The underground museum (大明宫遗址博物馆), built where villagers had dug rubbish pits before the site was protected

Location & getting there

Getting to Daming Palace National Heritage Park

• Search for 大明宫国家遗址公园 with 西安市 and 未央区.