Imperial China Era

221 BCE – 1912 CE · 5 sites

All sites in this period

World Record

Most-Visited Ancient Site in the World

Great Wall of China

700 BCE – 1644 CE

The largest defensive structure ever built by human hands — a sprawling system of walls, forts, and watchtowers stretching over 21,000 kilometres across northern China, constructed and rebuilt across more than two millennia by successive dynasties from the Warring States period through the Ming. Far more than a single wall, it represents the accumulated military engineering of an entire civilization defending its northern frontier against nomadic incursion.

Iron AgeClassicalImperial China

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Country Record

Earliest Known Site in China

Terracotta Army

246 BCE – 208 BCE

Life-sized terracotta army buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, to guard him in the afterlife, discovered in 1974 near Xi'an.

ClassicalImperial China

Leshan Giant Buddha

713 CE – 803 CE

The largest pre-modern stone Buddha in the world — a 71-metre seated figure carved directly into a red sandstone cliff at the confluence of three rivers in Sichuan, China. Begun in 713 CE and completed ninety years later, it was conceived to calm the deadly currents below, and its hidden internal drainage has helped it survive for over twelve centuries.

Imperial China

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Longmen Grottoes

493 CE – 1127 CE

One of the greatest treasuries of Chinese Buddhist stone sculpture — more than 2,300 caves and niches cut into the limestone cliffs above the Yi River near Luoyang, holding over 100,000 carved images of the Buddha and bodhisattvas produced across four centuries. Begun by the Northern Wei dynasty around 493 CE and reaching its height under the Tang, its colossal Vairocana Buddha at the Fengxian Temple, some 17 metres tall, ranks among the supreme achievements of East Asian religious art.

Late AntiqueEarly MedievalMedieval

Cliff face of the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang, honeycombed with Buddhist cave temples carved over a thousand years

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Country Record

Oldest Complex in China

Mogao Caves

366 CE – 1368 CE

A honeycomb of 492 Buddhist cave temples cut into a cliff face at the western edge of the Gobi Desert, filled with murals and sculptures created continuously across a thousand years of Silk Road history. In 1900, a hidden chamber known as the Library Cave was discovered sealed behind a wall, containing roughly 50,000 manuscripts and paintings — including the Diamond Sutra of 868 CE, the world's oldest dated printed book — that transformed the study of medieval Asian religion, language, and trade.

Late AntiqueEarly MedievalMedieval