Imperial China Era

221 BCE – 1912 CE · 8 sites

All sites in this period

Continent Record

Most-Visited Ancient Site in Asia

Great Wall of China

700 BCE – 1644 CE

The vast frontier fortification system of northern China — rammed-earth Qin walls and the iconic stone Ming battlements — remains the single most conspicuous monumental gap left in a global archaeological atlas.

933

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.

422

ClassicalImperial China

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

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

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.

311

Imperial China

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 and cave openings of the Kizil Buddhist grottoes, Xinjiang

Country Record

Known by the Most Names in China

Kizil Caves

300 CE – 800 CE

The earliest large complex of Buddhist rock-cut cave temples on the northern Silk Road, carved into cliffs above the Muzart River near Kucha — murals of Indo-Iranian and Central Asian style that predate and influenced later Chinese grotto art.

ClassicalLate AntiqueImperial China

Massive mud-brick city walls of the Gaochang ruins near Turpan, Xinjiang

Country Record

Longest Continuously Occupied Site in China

Gaochang

100 CE – 1300 CE

Vast mud-brick ruins of the oasis capital east of Turpan — known as Gaochang in Chinese sources and Qocho/Khocho under the Uyghur kingdom — a Buddhist then Manichaean–Buddhist Silk Road metropolis with city walls still delineating a huge urban footprint in the desert.

Imperial ChinaMedieval

Wind-eroded mud-brick and loess ruins of the ancient city of Jiaohe near Turpan

Continent Record

Northernmost Known Site in Asia

Jiaohe

200 BCE – 1400 CE

A spectacular cliff-top ruined city carved and built on a loess plateau between two river channels near Turpan — capital of the Nearer Jushi kingdom and later a key Silk Road garrison town, abandoned to the desert winds but retaining streets, Buddhist temples, and housing cut into yellow earth.

ClassicalImperial ChinaMedieval