Xi'an

Overview

Xi’an is the old imperial capital of China and the base for the Terracotta Army. The Zhou, Qin, Han, Sui and Tang dynasties all ruled from here, and in the eighth century, when the city was called Chang’an, it held more than a million people and was probably the largest city on earth. It was also the eastern end of the Silk Road routes into Central Asia, which is why the centre of a Han Chinese city has a Muslim quarter and a mosque founded in the Tang period.

Almost nothing of Chang’an stands above ground. What you walk around today is a Ming city: a rectangle of wall built from 1370 on the line of the Tang imperial city, enclosing about 14 square kilometres. The Bell Tower stands at the crossing of the four main streets in the exact centre, the Drum Tower just west of it, and behind the Drum Tower is the Muslim Quarter, home to around 60,000 people, more than half of them Hui. The Tang survivals are outside the wall to the south: the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, the Small Wild Goose Pagoda and the murals and gold in the Shaanxi History Museum.

The warriors are 35 kilometres east, near Lintong, and take most of a day. Give the city itself two days: one for the wall, the towers and the Muslim Quarter, one for the museum and the pagodas. The modern city is huge (nearly 13 million people in the municipality at the 2020 census), but a visitor rarely needs to leave the walled core and the southern suburbs, and the metro joins the two.

Neighbourhoods

Locals divide the city into chengli, inside the wall, and chengwai, outside it, and that is the only distinction a visitor really needs. Inside is the old city; outside, the interesting part is south.

Inside the wall

Four avenues, Dong Dajie (East Street), Xi Dajie (West Street), Nan Dajie and Bei Dajie, meet at the Bell Tower and quarter the walled city. Administratively it is three districts, Xincheng, Lianhu and Beilin, which lie mostly within the Second Ring Road and have had development restricted, which is why the core is still low-rise. Everything in here is walkable: Zhonglou station on line 2 sits under the Bell Tower, Yongningmen is at the South Gate, Beidajie one stop north.

Muslim Quarter

The quarter runs north and west from the Drum Tower, bounded roughly by West Street to the south and Hongfu Street to the north. Tourists are funnelled onto Beiyuanmen, the souvenir-heavy strip behind the Drum Tower; locals use the entrance behind the Bai Sheng department store on West Street, at the north end of South Guangji Street, and the butchers cluster at the north end of Qiaozikou. Visitor numbers more than doubled between 1992 and 2006 and the lanes were never built for it: narrow roads, few toilets, little parking. Come for the food and the mosque, then get off the main drag.

South Gate and Shuyuanmen

Beilin District, the southern slice of the walled city, holds the South Gate, the Forest of Stelae and a strip of hostels along the inside of the wall. Shuyuanmen Ancient Culture Street, running east from the gate towards the stelae museum, is where the brush, ink and paper shops are, and the calligraphy trade still uses them. Outside the gate, glass-walled shopping malls fill the blocks around Yongningmen station, and the plaza is where the older residents dance in the evening.

Qujiang and the pagoda district

The southeastern suburb around the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is Qujiang New District, a purpose-built culture-and-tourism zone within Yanta District. It has Tang Paradise, a 67-hectare theme park modelled on Tang royal gardens, the Great Tang All Day Mall pedestrian street, the Qujiang Pool Heritage Park and a 6.8-kilometre elevated sightseeing monorail that loops the lot in about 45 minutes. Xiaozhai, a stop west on line 2 and 3, is the shopping hub and the Shaanxi History Museum’s station. It is modern, wide and clean, and a metro ride from anything old.

North of the wall

Xi’an railway station sits at the top of Jiefang Road just outside the wall, and directly north of the tracks is the Daming Palace National Heritage Park, the excavated footprint of the Tang palace, reached through a tunnel under the line or from Damingxi station on line 2; ¥60, open from 08:30. Further out, Weiyang District has the Han Weiyang Palace ruins and the North railway station, which is a transport hub and nothing more.

See & do

The sights split into two groups: inside the wall (the wall itself, the Bell and Drum towers, the Great Mosque, the Forest of Stelae) and in the southern suburbs (the Shaanxi History Museum and the two pagodas). The Terracotta Army is a separate day.

The city wall

The Hongwu Emperor’s wall took eight years to build from 1370 and has been rebuilt three times since, most recently in 1983, so what you see is complete: about 14 kilometres of rampart, 12 metres high, 12 to 14 metres wide on top, with 5,984 crenels, a watchtower at each corner and a moat 18 metres wide outside. You go up by ramp at the main gates. A full loop on foot takes four to five hours; by bike it is about two hours at a dawdle and just over one if you keep moving. Entry is ¥54 (¥100 combined with the Forest of Stelae) and the wall is open 08:00 to 23:00, but only the South Gate stays open that late; most other gates close at 18:00 or 19:00. Bikes, including tandems, are hired on top of the South and East gates for around ¥40 per two hours plus a ¥200 deposit, and you can usually drop them at another gate.

The surface is bumpy and a lot of riders give up halfway, which is fine: the landscaped park along the moat at the base gives a second, quieter view of the battlements, and the wall is lit after dark. The wall sits on China’s tentative World Heritage list under “City Walls of the Ming and Qing Dynasties”, proposed in 2008.

Bell Tower and Drum Tower

The Bell Tower was built in 1384 and moved to its present spot, a traffic island at the meeting of the four main avenues, in 1582; it is 36 metres tall on a base 35.5 metres square and is the largest surviving bell tower in China. The Tang-era Jingyun bell that hung here was moved to the Forest of Stelae in 1953; the bell you see is a 6.5-tonne replica from 1997. Enter from the north side by the metro entrance. The Drum Tower, four years older (1380), stands 200 metres west at the mouth of the Muslim Quarter; the bells announced morning and the drums evening, and the north terrace carries 24 drums named for the 24 solar terms.

Tickets are ¥30 each or ¥50 for both. From 1 April to 10 October both towers open 08:30 to 21:30; the rest of the year they close at 18:00, and short musical performances run roughly hourly.

Muslim Quarter and Great Mosque

Muslim traders arriving along the Silk Road settled in this corner of Chang’an in the Tang dynasty, and their descendants are still here: the quarter has ten working mosques. The Great Mosque at 30 Huajue Lane is the largest and the one to visit. It claims a founding date of 742, though the present layout is from 1392 under the Hongwu Emperor: five courtyards on an east-west axis across 1.23 hectares, more than twenty buildings, and not a dome in sight. The prayer hall has a Chinese tiled roof and holds 1,000 people, and the Xingxin Tower, a pagoda-like pavilion, did the job of a minaret. Non-Muslims pay ¥25 to walk the gardens and read the steles but cannot enter the prayer hall; hours are 08:00 to 18:40, and the alley is hard to find, so follow the blue Chinese-only signs or ask.

Nearby at 144 Beiyuanmen, the Gao Family Compound is an 86-room late-Ming courtyard mansion that belonged to the official Gao Yuesong, now a museum with puppet shows; ¥15 in, ¥30 with the show, open 10:00 to 19:00.

Shaanxi History Museum

The museum at 91 Xiaozhai East Road opened in June 1991 in a building styled after Tang architecture, and holds more than 370,000 objects. Go for the Tang material: the Hejia Village hoard of gilt silver, including the agate cup with an animal’s head, the tomb murals, and a kneeling archer brought in from the Qin emperor’s pits. The main halls are free but you must book on the museum’s WeChat account, then collect the ticket at the counters on the east side of the south entrance; the machines only read Chinese ID cards. The Tang treasures gallery costs ¥30 and the Tang murals gallery ¥270. Hours are 08:30 to 18:00 from 15 March to 14 November and 09:00 to 17:30 in winter, closed Mondays, with no tickets in the last 90 minutes. Xiaozhai station (lines 2 and 3) is the stop; the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda is 800 metres southeast.

Forest of Stelae (Beilin Museum)

Inside the southeast corner of the wall at 15 Sanxue Street, the old Confucian temple has held inscribed stones since 1087 and now has nearly 3,000 of them. The two to find are the Kaicheng Stone Classics, the Confucian canon cut onto 114 stones between 833 and 837, and the Nestorian Stele of 781, whose Chinese and Syriac text is the earliest record of Christianity in China. Entry ¥60 (¥50 December to February), open 08:00 to 18:30 most of the year, about 800 metres from Yongningmen metro.

Terracotta Army

The Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor near Lintong, 35 kilometres east, holds around 8,000 life-size clay soldiers, horses and chariots in three pits, found by well-digging farmers in 1974. Entry is ¥120 and the site opens 08:30 to 17:00 from mid-March to mid-November, half an hour earlier in winter. The pits, the bronze chariots and how to plan the day are in the Terracotta Army guide; the buses are under Getting around.

The two pagodas

The Giant Wild Goose Pagoda went up in 652 in the Da Ci’en Temple to hold the scriptures the monk Xuanzang carried back from India. It is the emblem of the city, ¥40 for the temple grounds with the climb extra, on metro line 3 at Dayanta. The Small Wild Goose Pagoda is the quieter one, in the grounds of the Xi’an Museum at 72 Youyi West Road near Nanshaomen station; the museum is free, shows around 2,000 of its 110,000 pieces, needs a booking and closes on Tuesdays.

Food & drink

Shaanxi cooking is wheat, lamb, cumin, chilli and vinegar, and the four dishes every visitor meets are yangrou paomo, biangbiang noodles, roujiamo and liangpi.

Yangrou paomo

You get a thick, hard flatbread and an empty bowl. Tear the bread into pieces the size of a fingernail (first-timers always go too big), hand the bowl back, and it returns flooded with lamb broth, sliced lamb, glass noodles and spring onion, with pickled garlic and chilli paste alongside. Some places pre-shred the bread, some offer a beef version, and the most careful versions are in the Muslim Quarter. Lao Sun Jia at 364 Dong Dajie is the long-running Han-run name for it, with branches across town.

Biangbiang noodles

Belt-wide hand-pulled noodles under chilli oil, vinegar, garlic and greens, finished with hot oil poured over crushed chilli and cumin; toppings of egg, tomato or beef are common. The name is trademarked and there is a chain, but not every branch tastes like the original; locals point to the oldest shop, in Fen Alley inside the wall.

Roujiamo and liangpi

Roujiamo is a baked flatbread split and stuffed with chopped stewed meat: pork in Han shops, beef or lamb in Hui ones, and the Hui version is the original. One well-regarded shop, Yu Lao Da on Wuxing Street opposite the Catholic church, is mostly a breakfast place and may be shut by noon. Liangpi is cold wheat or rice-flour noodle sheets dressed with vinegar, chilli oil and soy, with cucumber and bean sprouts on top; it is the summer lunch.

Snacks and drinks

Persimmon cakes (shizi bing), deep-fried buns of persimmon dough with a black-sesame filling, cost about ¥1 at the Muslim Quarter stalls; guantang baozi are soup-filled steamed buns; lüdou gao are moist green-bean cakes sold by the half-jin. Wash it down with Bing Feng (Ice Peak), the Shaanxi orange soda that the traditional noodle shops stock instead of Fanta, ¥2 to ¥3 a glass bottle. Dried dates, melon seeds and nuts are sold by the jin (500 g) at fixed prices throughout the quarter, so do not bother haggling.

Where to eat

The Muslim Quarter is halal: no pork, and no alcohol at the table. The side lanes at right angles to the main strip have more variety and lower prices than Beiyuanmen, and a stall charging more than its neighbours but still holding a queue is usually the one selling real lamb rather than lamb cut with beef. For Han Chinese food, Dongmutou Shi, southeast of the Bell Tower, has a run of ordinary restaurants; the Qujiang malls have the chains and the foreign options.

Nightlife

Xi’an goes out later and closes earlier than its size suggests. People head out between 22:00 and 01:00 and the clubs run to about 04:00, but there are not many of them and they all play the same mix of Chinese disco and pop.

Defu Xiang and the South Gate

Defu Xiang, known simply as Bar Street, is the lane inside the South Gate where the first bars in the city opened; it is still where the football crowd gathers on match nights and one of the few places to fall into conversation with locals. In summer the stretch just east of the gate has bars with terraces and gardens, and the gate itself is lit up, so an evening on the wall and a drink below it is the natural pairing. The hostel by the South Gate runs a basement bar with live entertainment that fills with foreign travellers; the door is unmarked and you buzz to get in.

Nandajie clubs

The short South Street between the Bell Tower and the South Gate has the densest run of clubs, with restaurants open past midnight between them. Expect club staff on the pavement pushing hard for custom; it is a thin market.

Qujiang after dark

The Great Tang All Day Mall, the pedestrian street south of the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda, is the domestic-tourist night out, with the Tang Dynasty Night Market alongside it and the fountain in front of the pagoda running music-and-water shows. It is free, enormous and very Chinese, and the bars in the malls around it are the chain sort.

The Muslim Quarter is the other evening option and the only dry one: the grills and the sweet stalls run late and the lanes stay packed, but there is no drinking.

When to go

Xi’an has a temperate climate on the line between humid subtropical and continental. January averages just below freezing at −0.5°C, July 26.9°C, and the year brings 672 mm of rain, most of it in summer. Spring and autumn are the seasons to aim for.

March to May

Dust storms blow in from the northwest in March and April, so late April and May are the reliable weeks. The May Day holiday fills the wall and the warriors with domestic groups; book well ahead or avoid that week. Hua Shan, the Taoist peak 120 kilometres east, is at its best now before the summer heat and queues.

June to August

Hot, with strong midday sun and occasional heavy downpours. The wall has no shade at all, so ride it early or leave it for the evening; the shaded parks and the mountain sites outside the city are cooler than the streets. Summer rain also means the wall’s bike stands close more often.

September to November

The best months. Humidity drops, the persimmon harvest reaches the Muslim Quarter, and the Xi’an City Wall International Marathon has run on top of the wall every November since 1993. National Day Golden Week at the start of October is the busiest week of the year at every sight; the second half of October is the sweet spot.

December to February

Cold and dry, with snow on about 14 days a year, and it is the smog season (see Practical info). The towers and museums keep shorter winter hours and the pits at Lintong are empty of school groups. Chinese New Year shuts many small Muslim Quarter kitchens for a week.

In short: April, May, September and October, skipping the first week of May and the first week of October.

Getting there

Xi’an is the main hub of northwest China, with the country’s eleventh-busiest airport and high-speed rail in every direction.

By air

Xi’an Xianyang International Airport (XIY) handled 48.5 million passengers in 2025 and is a hub for China Eastern and Hainan Airlines; international routes include London Heathrow, Paris, Dubai, Istanbul, Singapore, Melbourne and Sydney. Terminal 5 opened on 20 February 2025 and now takes most of the traffic. The airport is about 40 kilometres northwest of the walled city.

Metro line 14 runs from the airport to Beikezhan (Beiguangchang) at the North railway station, where you change to line 2 for the Bell Tower. The airport bus is simpler if you are staying inside the wall: ¥25, about an hour, running 08:00 to 01:00 and departing whenever a bus fills; route 1 goes non-stop to the Melody Hotel at the start of West Street by the Bell Tower, route 2 to the railway station. Taxis often refuse the meter for the airport run; ¥100 to ¥120 is the going negotiated rate.

By rail

High-speed trains use Xi’an North, 15 kilometres north of the centre and the terminus of metro line 2. Journey times: Zhengzhou 2 to 3 hours, Lanzhou 3, Chengdu 4, Beijing 4 to 6, Shanghai 7, Guangzhou 8; change at Lanzhou for the 12-hour run to Ürümqi. Conventional and sleeper trains use the old Xi’an railway station at the north end of Jiefang Road, just outside the wall. Ignore Xi’an South, which is far out and barely served. For Chengdu and Chongqing the train beats flying once you count the airport transfers.

By bus

The Shaanxi Province long-distance bus station is 100 metres south of Xi’an railway station, on the other side of the wall through an underpass, with services to Huashan (2 to 3 hours), Luoyang (5 to 7) and Lanzhou (8 to 10). Rail is faster for all three: Huashan is 35 minutes by high-speed train. Driving yourself into the walled city is pointless; parking is scarce and the metro covers everything you want.

Getting around

Inside the wall you walk; outside it the metro does the work.

Metro

The network opened with line 2 on 16 September 2011 and has grown to 13 lines, 423 kilometres and 284 stations, carrying about 3.8 million riders a day. Line 2 is the one that matters: North railway station, Beidajie, Zhonglou under the Bell Tower, Yongningmen at the South Gate, then Xiaozhai for the Shaanxi History Museum. Line 3 crosses it at Xiaozhai and serves Dayanta for the big pagoda; line 14 is the airport link. Pay by scanning Alipay or WeChat at the gate, or buy a Changantong card at any station counter with your passport.

Bus

Tourist bus 610 (signed 游8) links the railway station, Bell Tower, Small Wild Goose Pagoda, Shaanxi History Museum and Giant Wild Goose Pagoda in one loop but can leave you waiting half an hour; 609 does Bell Tower, South Gate and the big pagoda; 611 runs every minute or two in rush hour between the station and the Bell Tower.

To the Terracotta Army

Bus 306, also signed Tourist Bus 5, leaves from the car park on the east side of Xi’an railway station (your right, facing the building), costs ¥7 paid on board and takes about an hour, up to three in bad traffic, stopping at Huaqing Hot Springs on the way. Do not go to the bus station on the inside of the wall, where touts with “bus 5” signs sell the same trip dearer. Local bus 914 is slower, on ordinary roads, but more frequent, also ¥7. Hostel tours add an English-speaking guide and, usually, a “terracotta factory” and a medicine shop.

Taxi

Flag fall is ¥9 for the first 3 kilometres then ¥2 per kilometre: about ¥10 inside the wall, ¥12 to ¥20 to the southern sights. Drivers change shift between 15:00 and 17:00 and will not stop, and at other times some decline short or awkward destinations; have your hotel write the address in Chinese, or use the DiDi app and skip the negotiation.

On foot and by bike

The city is flat. Bell Tower to Drum Tower is a few minutes on foot, Bell Tower to the South Gate a short walk down Nan Dajie. Shared bikes unlocked with Alipay or WeChat are everywhere for the longer hops inside the wall; the wall-top ride is a separate ticketed thing, covered under See and do.

Where to stay

Sleep inside the wall unless you have a good reason not to. The walled city puts the towers, the mosque, the food and the South Gate bars within walking distance, and the metro takes you south for the museum.

Inside the wall

There are at least six international youth hostels in the centre, and they double as the tour desks for the warriors and Huashan. Shuyuan Hostel sits right beside the South Gate with a pub underneath and a coffee house, ten minutes from the Drum Tower; its partner Han Tang Inn is down an alley near the Bell Tower with a fourth-floor bar and a weekly dumpling night. Mid-range Chinese hotels line Nan Dajie between the Bell Tower and the South Gate, and Xincheng District east of the Bell Tower has four-star business hotels within 3 kilometres of the railway station. Rooms on or near Beiyuanmen put you in the Muslim Quarter itself, which is atmospheric and loud until the stalls shut.

Just outside the South Gate

A five-star in two towers stands 200 metres outside the South Gate, and the mall district around Yongningmen has more of the same: comfortable, walkable back into the old city, and quieter at night.

Qujiang

The resort-style hotels around Tang Paradise and the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda are the top end: big grounds, big lobbies, and a metro ride to anything Ming. Choose this if hotel quality matters more than stepping out into the old city.

North station

Hotels around Xi’an North exist for people with a dawn train and nothing else; it is a long line 2 ride from the wall.

Practical info

Country-wide matters, payments, VPNs, visas, plugs and tap water, are covered under China; the notes below are Xi’an’s own.

Passport and bookings

The free museums (Shaanxi History Museum, Xi’an Museum) require an advance booking on their WeChat accounts and issue tickets at staffed counters because the self-service machines only read Chinese ID cards, so carry your passport and book a day or two ahead in high season. The wall’s bike stands take a passport or ¥200 as deposit; keep the deposit slip or you will not get it back.

Station touts and off-meter taxis

Coming out of Xi’an railway station you will be met by hotel touts; a firm “bu yao” and walking on is enough. Taxi drivers waiting at the station and at the airport-bus drop-offs work off-meter and can ask several times the proper fare; walk a block and hail one, or order on the app.

Pickpockets

Xi’an is as safe as any Chinese city, but the Muslim Quarter at peak hours, the buses, and any national holiday crowd are where pockets get picked. Front pockets and a hand on the bag in food queues.

Toilets

Carry tissue. Cheap guesthouses generally have squat toilets, major sights and Western-style hotels have seated ones, and hotels tolerate foreigners nipping in to use theirs. The Muslim Quarter is short of public toilets, so go before you enter.

Air

Winter air in the Wei River basin is often as bad as Beijing’s, driven by coal heating in the countryside around the city. Check an air-quality app before a wall ride between December and February and pack a mask.

Places to visit

Archaeological Site

• Terracotta Army — About 8,000 life-size Qin soldiers in three pits at Lintong, 35 km east of Xi’an

Tower

• Giant Wild Goose Pagoda — Tang brick pagoda of 652 built to store the sutras Xuanzang carried back from India, now the emblem of Xi’an
• Small Wild Goose Pagoda — Xi’an’s quieter Tang pagoda of 707 to 709, thirteen storeys since the 1556 earthquake, in the free grounds of the Xi’an Museum