The Starting Point of the Silk Road — the ancient walled city where China's greatest emperor buried an army of 8,000 terracotta soldiers and where the Tang Dynasty presided over the world's most cosmopolitan city, still ringed by the most intact city walls in China and alive with the smell of mutton skewers from the Muslim Quarter
Xi'an is the capital of Shaanxi Province — a city of 12 million that served as the capital of 13 Chinese dynasties, including the Qin (whose First Emperor united China and built the Terracotta Army), the Han, and the Tang, making it one of the longest-continuously-occupied capital cities in human history and the eastern terminus of the ancient Silk Road. The Terracotta Army (discovered 1974, 35km east) is among the greatest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century: 8,000 life-size warriors, horses, and chariots buried with Qin Shi Huang in 210 BCE, each with an individually modelled fac…
Xi'an was first established as a major settlement by the Zhou dynasty (~1050 BCE) and became the capital of the Qin dynasty under Qin Shi Huang (221–210 BCE), who unified China for the first time and ordered the construction of both the Great Wall and the Terracotta Army. Under the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), Xi'an (then called Chang'an) was the world's largest city and the launch point of the Silk Road. The Tang dynasty (618–907 CE) made Chang'an the most cosmopolitan city in the world — home to Persian, Arab, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Central Asian merchants, Nestorian Christian churc…