Chang'an City site in Daxing of Sui Dynasty and Tang Dynasty

Site of Chang'an City in Sui and Tang Dynasties

synonym

The site of Chang'an City in Daxing of Sui and Tang Dynasties generally refers to the site of Chang'an City in Sui and Tang Dynasties

The site of Chang'an City in Sui and Tang Dynasties is a national key cultural relic protection unit. Located in today's Xi'an city. The Sui Dynasty was called Daxing city. It was first built in the second year of kaihuang (582) of Emperor Wen of the Sui Dynasty. It was carefully designed by Yu Wenkai after careful investigation. In the third year of kaihuang, it was moved from Chang'an (now Chang'an city of the Han Dynasty) to the capital of the Sui Dynasty. After the establishment of the Tang Dynasty, it was still called Chang'an City, which was built and expanded continuously. The layout of Chang'an City in Daxing Tang Dynasty in Sui Dynasty absorbed the advantages of Jiankang city in Southern Dynasty, Luoyang City in Northern Wei Dynasty and Yenan city in Northern Qi Dynasty in Eastern Wei Dynasty, and made use of the local "six slopes" terrain characteristics, which was composed of Waiguo city (Luocheng), palace City, imperial city and Forbidden Garden.

Since the late 1950s, large-scale investigation and excavation of the Chang'an City site have been carried out. The exploration of the outer Guo City, the Imperial City, the palace city, and the streets, markets, and channels in the city have been completed successively. Based on this, the measured and restored maps of Chang'an City have been drawn.

History of Archaeology

The scope of Chang'an city includes the city and suburb of Xi'an. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, it was destroyed badly and finally became a ruin. Before liberation, many scholars tried to excavate the ruins of the Tang City, but they failed because of the limited conditions.

In 1957, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences organized a special excavation team of Tangcheng and began a large-scale excavation work. After more than four years of hard work, the general picture of the site has been revealed. From the ruins of the city layout, palaces, streets and squares that have been excavated, we can imagine the grand occasion of the city at that time.

In 2011, archaeologists found a large area of Tang Dynasty pottery kiln group sites while cooperating with the capital construction. Among them, two groups of pottery kilns are well preserved and have been backfilled and protected under the coordination of relevant departments.

At the end of 2010, Shaanxi Provincial Institute of archaeology conducted an archaeological excavation of 1000 square meters in the west area of dabaiyang West Village, Weiyang District, Xi'an.

Tomb remains

At the end of 2010, Shaanxi Provincial Institute of archaeology cleaned up 22 pottery kilns, including 17 pottery kilns and 3 water wells in the Tang Dynasty, as well as some tombs of different ages.

In November 2015, archaeologists from Shaanxi cultural relics department discovered 450 Tang Dynasty relics and a number of important commercial relics during the excavation of the eastern city site of Chang'an City in Tang Dynasty. According to reports, the excavation is located in the east of the central part of Dongshi site. A total of 450 pieces of Tang Dynasty relics such as bricks and tiles, pottery, jade, bronze, glass, gem ring face, Kaiyuan Tongbao and porcelain pot negatives with the words "Home Hotel" have been unearthed. During the site excavation, three Tang Dynasty Road Relics, three ditch relics, one diansihou workshop relic, four water wells, two cellar wells, 11 seepage wells, 12 ash pits, three live soil pits, one lying mud pit and one pottery urn pit were found.

Cultural relics

Waiguo City: 9721 meters in length from east to west, 8651.7 meters in width from north to south, and 36.7 kilometers in circumference. It was the largest city in the world at that time. There are 15 gates. On the east wall, there are Tonghua gate, Chunming gate and Yanxing gate from north to south. On the south wall, there are Qixia gate, Mingde gate and Anhua gate from east to west. On the west wall, there are Kaiyuan gate, Jingguang gate and Yanping gate from north to South. In the middle of the north wall, there is the north wall of the palace city. To the east of the palace city, there is Danfeng gate. To the west of the palace city, there are Fanglin gate (Hualin gate in Sui Dynasty), Jingyao gate and Guanghua gate. Xuanwu Gate and Anli gate share with the palace city .

There are only a small section of the ground wall near Xuanwumen and anhuamen. The foundation of the underground wall is basically well preserved, with a width of 9-10 meters and 20 meters in some places. Mingde gate is the South Gate of Chang'an City, located in the central axis of Chang'an City and the south end of Zhuque street. It is the largest gate of Chang'an city. The gate is 52.5 meters long from east to west and 16.5 meters deep from north to south. There are five gateways, each of which is 6.5 meters wide.

The partition wall between the gateways is 2.9 meters thick. There are 15 column pits on both sides of the gateways, which are symmetrical from east to west. The middle of each gateway used to have a threshold, which is made of bluestone. Now only part of the remains are left. The stone threshold of the East Gate Road is 0.4m wide, 0.26M thick and 3.7m long. There are four rutted grooves on the threshold in the middle gate road. The remaining Western doorsill is more exquisite than others. It is carved with smooth rolling grass pattern and relief crouching beast, which has high artistic value.

There are 11 north-south streets and 14 East-West streets in Waiguo city. The streets are very wide. Among them, Zhuque street in Mingde gate is 150-155 meters wide. There are 3.3 meters wide and 2 meters deep ditches on both sides. The main street in the city divides Guocheng into 110 squares, 55 squares to the east of Zhuque Street are Wannian County, and 55 squares to the west of Zhuque Street are Chang'an County. The area of four rows of square on both sides of Zhuque street is the smallest, with east-west gate and a cross street.

The six rows of squares on the East and west sides of the imperial city are the largest, with four gates in the East, West, North and South and cross street dividing the whole square into four blocks, and alleys dividing the whole square into 16 districts. There are residents' houses, princes' houses and temples in the square. According to historical records, there are more than 100 Buddhist temples, more than 30 Taoist temples, two Persian temples and five Nestorian temples. The famous ones are the big wild goose pagoda of Ci'en Temple and the small wild goose pagoda of Jianfu temple. There are also Daxingshan temple and Qinglong temple.

There are walls in the square. The gate opens early and closes late. Special personnel are assigned to defend. In the southeast and southwest of the Imperial City, there are two cities, the East and the West. In the Sui Dynasty, the east city was called metropolis city, and the west city was called Liren city. There are two east-west and North-South streets in the city, forming a "well" shaped street. There are rammed earth walls around the city, with two doors on each side. There are 9 districts in the city, each of which is surrounded by shops, which is the concentration area of handicraft industry and Commerce in Chang'an.

Was there a turret at the southwest corner of the Waiguo city wall in the Tang Dynasty similar to that of the Ming and Qing Dynasties? Excavation results show that there is no sign of building turrets here. According to the analysis of he Suili, the archaeological team, if there is a turret, the base of the corner should be wider than the base of the city wall, and a larger pier base should be formed. However, the width of the corner turning base excavated and the base of the city wall are both 5.5 meters, so there should be no foundation for building the turret.

Palace city is a place for emperors and royal families to live and deal with court affairs, including Taiji palace, East Palace and yeting palace. It is 1492.1 meters long from north to south, 2820.3 meters wide from east to west, and 8.6 kilometers long. It is located in the North Center of Chang'an city. In today's Xi'an City, there are ruins of the south wall of the palace city in "xiwutai" and a section of the north wall in the north of Ziqiang West Road. The walls are made of rammed earth, and the base is generally about 18 meters wide. The South Gate of the palace is Chengtian gate (Guangyang gate in Sui Dynasty). The site is located in today's Lianhu park. It is 41.7 meters long from east to west and 19 meters deep from north to south. There are three gateways with brick or stone slabs on the base. There are two gates to the north of the palace city. The change of Xuanwu Gate happened in the Xuanwu Gate to the north of the palace city.

The Imperial City, also known as "Zicheng", is located in the south of the palace city, separated from the palace city by the street in the north. It is 2820.3 meters wide from east to west, 1843.6 meters long from north to South and 9.2 kilometers in circumference. Within the imperial city are the central government office, the imperial temple and the state. The Zhuque gate is the main gate of the imperial city. It corresponds to Chengtian gate in the north, Zhuque street in the south, and Mingde gate, the main gate of Waiguo City, is the central axis of the whole city.

Hanguang gate is a gate on the west side of Zhuque gate. Its site is well preserved. It is rectangular in plane, 37.4 meters long from east to west and 19.6 meters wide from north to south. The gate pier is made of pure loess plate, with brick wall and brick thickness of 0.35 meters. On both sides of the doorway, there are orderly arranged bluestone plinths, symmetrical in East and West, square in shape, 72-78 cm square. In the middle of the plinth, there is a circular mortise with a diameter of about 10 cm and a depth of 10 cm to erect columns, which proves that the gatehouse was a wooden structure. On the section of the city wall of Hanguangmen, the rammed layers repaired in Tang Dynasty, Song Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty and Ming and Qing Dynasty are clearly preserved, which is a historical witness of the change of the Imperial City in Chang'an city. In the Tang Dynasty, there were also two large palaces in Chang'an. Daming Palace was located on the dragon head plain in the northeast of the city. Because it was located in the northeast of Taiji palace, it was called "dongnei" and Taiji Palace "xinei". The Xingqing palace, built in chunmingmen in the period of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang Dynasty, is in the southeast of Taiji palace, so it is called "Nannei".

Chang'an City has a perfect water supply system. In addition to shaft sinking, Yongan, Qingming and Longshou canals introduce high water and high water respectively, which flow through the city and enter the palace in the north. After that, a canal was built to divert the Yellow River into the Qujiang pond. The architectural model of Chang'an city is a model of the capital construction in ancient China, which also has a certain impact on the capital construction of Japan, other Asian countries and some local governments in China. In the first year of Tianbao (904) at the end of Tang Dynasty, Zhu Wenjia moved the capital of Tang Zhaozong to Luoyang, ordered the residents of Chang'an to move according to their nationality, destroyed the Palace houses of Chang'an, and made the capital of 300 years of Chang'an in Sui and Tang Dynasties become ruins.

The results of excavation and survey show that there are more than 70 Li around Chang'an City in Tang Dynasty, which is more than five times larger than today's old city of Xi'an (the site of Xi'an in Ming and Qing Dynasties). The whole city is divided into three parts, the outermost is Waiguo City, the northern part of the middle is the Imperial City, and the central part of the northern end of the imperial city is the palace city, where the emperor lived. There were twelve gates on the outer wall. Many vertical and horizontal streets divide all areas of the city except the palace city and the imperial city into 108 rectangular squares.

Chang'an City in Sui and Tang Dynasties is a masterpiece of urban planning and design in ancient China. It plays a very important role in the history of urban planning in China and even in the world. Discussion on the planning methods of Chang'an City in Sui and Tang Dynasties

Chinese PinYin : Sui Da Xing Tang Zhang An Cheng Yi Zhi