China · Shaanxi
Xi'an
The eastern end of the Silk Road, capital to thirteen dynasties, and the city an emperor built a clay army to guard.
Xi'an was Chang'an, capital to thirteen dynasties and the eastern end of the Silk Road, and it wears that past more visibly than any other Chinese city. The Terracotta Army stands in its pits an hour east, and the Ming city wall still runs unbroken around the old grid, wide enough to cycle. Between them sit Tang pagodas, a stele forest of carved classics, and a Hui Muslim quarter whose lanes have been feeding the city since the caravans arrived.
Suggested stay
2–4 days
Language
Mandarin Chinese
Currency
CNY
Timezone
UTC+8
Why you'll love Xi'an
The Terracotta Army thousands of individually modelled soldiers still standing in the earth pits where farmers hit them with a well shaft in 1974, with much of the tomb complex still unopened
The city wall China's most complete set of ancient ramparts, a rectangle you can ride right around in an afternoon, old courtyards below on one side and the modern city on the other
Muslim Quarter food hand-pulled noodles, lamb skewers and flatbread torn into mutton soup, sold from Hui family lanes that have run on this trade for centuries
Dynastic depth Tang pagodas, Han tomb pits and one of China's great provincial museums, in the city where the Silk Road actually started
Best time to visit
Mar-Oct
17-33° days
34.261° N, 108.942° E
UTC+8 · Asia/Shanghai
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Weather & when to go to Xi'an
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Mar-Oct
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Xi'an
December and January are cold and grey, and the Guanzhong basin traps winter smog, which is bleak for a city whose best sights are outdoors. The bigger practical trap is crowds: the pits, the wall and the Muslim Quarter are shoulder to shoulder during the national holiday weeks in early October and early May.
Top things to do in Xi'an
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Terracotta Army - Pit 1 and the emperor's buried guard
history 👍 PopularThree excavated pits east of the city, the largest a hangar over ranks of life-size infantry, horses and chariots, every face modelled differently. The bronze chariot hall is the quiet highlight most visitors rush past.
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Xi'an City Wall - cycle the full circuit
history scenic 👍 PopularRoughly fourteen kilometres of Ming rampart, broad enough on top for two lanes of hired bicycles. A lap takes a couple of hours with stops at the corner towers, and it is best at dusk when the lanterns come on.
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Muslim Quarter - Beiyuanmen after dark
food culture arts 👍 PopularThe Hui neighbourhood behind the Drum Tower, where lanes of grills, noodle counters and persimmon-cake pans stay busy late. Loud, greasy and genuinely local underneath the souvenir stalls at the front.
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Shaanxi History Museum - the dynasties in one building
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe province was the seat of power for two thousand years, and this is where the best of it landed: Zhou bronzes, Han pottery, Tang gold and silver hoards, and tomb murals lifted whole from underground.
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Great Mosque of Xi'an - a mosque built like a Chinese temple
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedHidden in the lanes off the Muslim Quarter, laid out as a series of walled courtyards with tiled roofs, a minaret shaped like a pagoda and Arabic calligraphy carved in Chinese style. Calm two minutes from the crush.
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Big Wild Goose Pagoda - Xuanzang's sutra tower
historyRaised in the Tang to hold the scriptures the monk Xuanzang carried back from India, and still the landmark of the southern city. You can climb it for a view over the temple roofs and the square below.
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Beilin Stele Forest - the stone library of Chinese calligraphy
culture arts historyHalls of upright inscribed slabs, including the Confucian classics cut in stone and the Nestorian tablet recording a Christian mission at the Tang court. Rubbings are still taken by hand here.
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Bell Tower and Drum Tower - the centre of the grid
historyTwo Ming timber towers on the axis of the old city, one at the exact crossroads, the other guarding the entrance to the Muslim Quarter. Both are floodlit at night and both hold drum or chime performances.
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Small Wild Goose Pagoda and the Xi'an Museum
historyA slimmer, older, quieter pagoda in a garden of morning tai chi and mulberry trees, with a compact city museum beside it and none of the queues of its bigger namesake.
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Datang Everbright City - the Tang-themed night street
culture arts nightlife musicA long pedestrian boulevard south of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, lit up in reconstructed Tang style, with costumed performers, street opera and crowds hiring Tang dress for photographs. Unapologetically staged and enormously popular.
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Shaanxi noodles - biangbiang, yangrou paomo and roujiamo
foodBelt-wide biangbiang noodles under chilli and hot oil, shredded flatbread simmered in mutton broth, chopped pork stuffed into a griddled bun, and cold liangpi noodles with vinegar. Wheat country cooking, not rice country.
Best areas to stay in Xi'an
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Inside the walls (Bell Tower)
First-time visitors $$Walled old core on a Tang grid
Explore hotels in Inside the walls (Bell Tower) →
Muslim Quarter (Huimin Jie)
Food-first travellers $Hui food lanes, mosques, late crowds
Explore hotels in Muslim Quarter (Huimin Jie) →
Qujiang and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda
Families $$$Modern southern district, Tang-themed squares
Explore hotels in Qujiang and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda →
Xiaozhai
Budget stays $Student district, malls and cheap eats
Explore hotels in Xiaozhai →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Xi'an
Getting to & around Xi'an
Getting there
Fly into Xianyang northwest of the city, or arrive by high-speed train at Xi'an North
Flight
Xi'an Xianyang International Airport (XIY)
About 40 km northwest of the centre. The airport metro line runs to Xi'an North Railway Station, where you change onto the city network, and airport coaches run to the railway stations and hotels near the Bell Tower. A taxi takes around an hour.
Train
Xi'an North (Xi'an Bei)
The high-speed hub, with fast services from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Zhengzhou and Luoyang; metro lines run from beneath it into the old city
Train
Xi'an Railway Station
The older station just outside the north wall, still used by conventional and sleeper services, and the departure point for the Terracotta Army tourist bus
Coach
City bus stations
Long-distance coaches link Shaanxi towns and neighbouring provinces, though the high-speed trains have taken most of the useful routes
Getting around
Metro
Clean, fast and signed in English; one line runs north-south under the Bell Tower, another crosses east-west, and others reach the pagoda district and Xi'an North
TBC
Bus
Dense network, mostly Chinese-only signage. Tourist bus 306 from outside Xi'an Railway Station is the standard public run out to the Terracotta Army
TBC
Taxi and ride-hailing
Metered taxis are everywhere but hard to hail at shift change and around the walls; ride-hailing apps are the usual fallback
TBC
Shared bikes
App-unlocked bikes are stacked at most metro exits, and separate hire bikes wait at the wall gates for the ramparts circuit
TBC
Walking
The walled centre is flat and laid out on a grid, so most of the old city is walkable from the Bell Tower
Free
Day trips from Xi'an
Terracotta Army and Huaqing Palace
Full dayEmperor's buried army
The pits themselves, plus the burial mound of the First Emperor still standing unexcavated under its hill. Most trips add Huaqing Palace at the foot of Mount Li, a Tang hot-spring retreat where Chiang Kai-shek was seized in 1936.
Getting there
bus | car | tour
About 1 hr east by tourist bus, car or tour
Mount Huashan
Full daySheer granite peaks
One of China's five sacred mountains, a cluster of bare granite summits linked by stair-cut ridges, cable cars and the notorious bolted plank walk. Long, steep and spectacular; going up for sunrise is a Xi'an tradition.
Getting there
train | bus | tour
About 30 min by high-speed train, then bus and cable car
Han Yang Ling
Half dayUnderground Han tomb
The mausoleum of a Han emperor, shown from glass walkways over the open burial pits. The figures are a third life-size and were buried naked, their wooden arms and silk clothes long rotted away, which is eerier than the Qin ranks.
Getting there
car | tour
About 45 min north by car or tour, near the airport
Qianling Mausoleum
Full dayTang imperial tombs
The joint tomb of Emperor Gaozong and Wu Zetian, China's only reigning empress, built into a hill and never opened. A spirit way of stone officials, winged horses and headless foreign envoys climbs to it, and nearby satellite tombs hold Tang wall paintings.
Getting there
bus | car | tour
About 1.5 hr northwest by bus, car or tour
Famen Temple
Full dayBuddha relic pagoda
A pilgrimage temple west of the city whose collapsed pagoda gave up a sealed Tang crypt of finger relics, glass, silk and imperial gold. The old temple is worth the trip; the vast modern complex beside it is not to everyone's taste.
Getting there
bus | car | tour
About 2 hr west by bus, car or tour
A little history of Xi'an
The Wei valley has been the seat of Chinese power longer than anywhere else. The Zhou ruled from near here, the Qin unified the country from Xianyang next door in 221 BC, and the Han built Chang'an, from which caravans rode west and the Silk Road took shape. The Sui laid out a huge new grid city on the site, and the Tang made it Chang'an again: a walled capital of perhaps a million people, with Persian merchants, Central Asian musicians, Buddhist translation halls and a Nestorian church all inside the same wards.
The rebellion of 755 broke that century, and when the Tang fell the capital moved east for good, leaving a provincial city inside shrunken walls. The Ming rebuilt those ramparts in the 1370s and gave the place its present name, meaning western peace. It returned to the world's attention twice in the twentieth century: in 1936, when Chiang Kai-shek was kidnapped here and forced into a united front against Japan, and in 1974, when farmers digging a well struck the head of a clay soldier.
Qin Shi Huang unifies China from Xianyang; work goes on at his tomb complex east of today's city
The Han found Chang'an, which becomes the eastern anchor of the Silk Road
The Sui lay out a vast new grid capital, Daxing, on the site
Tang Chang'an becomes the capital and grows into the largest, most cosmopolitan city on earth
The An Lushan rebellion breaks the Tang and the capital never recovers its reach
The court is forced east and Chang'an's palaces are dismantled
The Ming rebuild the city walls that still ring the centre, and the city is renamed Xi'an
The Xi'an Incident: Chiang Kai-shek is seized at Huaqing and forced into a united front against Japan
Farmers sinking a well near Lintong strike the Terracotta Army
Know before you go
Payment
Cash preferred
English
Limited
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / I
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+86
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
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FAQs about Xi'an
▸ When is the best time to visit Xi'an?
Spring and autumn are the pick, with mild days for the wall and the pits and the trees turning around the pagodas. Summer is fine but busy with domestic holidays, while December and January are cold, grey and prone to winter smog in the basin.
▸ How do you get to the Terracotta Army?
It is about an hour east of the city. The public tourist bus leaves from outside Xi'an Railway Station, and cars and half-day tours are easy to arrange. Go at opening: the pits are a long walk apart and the site fills fast by mid-morning.
▸ How many days do you need in Xi'an?
Two full days works: one for the Terracotta Army and Huaqing, one for the city wall, the Muslim Quarter and the Shaanxi History Museum. A third day buys Mount Huashan or the Tang and Han tombs without rushing anything.
▸ Is Xi'an worth visiting beyond the Terracotta Army?
Yes, and plenty of people underrate it as a one-sight stop. The walled centre, the Tang pagodas, the stele forest, the Great Mosque and the provincial museum would carry the city on their own, and the food is one of China's most distinctive regional kitchens.
▸ What should I eat in Xi'an?
Roujiamo, chopped pork in a griddled bun; yangrou paomo, flatbread you tear up yourself into mutton broth; belt-wide biangbiang noodles under chilli oil; cold liangpi with vinegar; lamb skewers and persimmon cakes from the Muslim Quarter grills.
▸ Can you cycle on the city wall?
Yes, and it is the best thing you can do in the old city. Bicycles are hired at the main gates, the circuit runs roughly fourteen kilometres, and a full lap with stops takes about two hours. Late afternoon into dusk is the time to go.
More in China
Beijing
Eight centuries of Chinese capital on one axis: the Forbidden City at its centre, the Great Wall along the ridgeline north.
✓ best Apr-May, Sep-OctShanghai
The one Chinese city built to look outwards - a treaty-port waterfront on one bank, the country's tallest skyline on the other, and the eating to match.
✓ best Mar-May, Oct-Nov