The Liuhe City Wall

Liuhe City Wall

The Liuhe City Wall is a cultural relic protection unit of Nanjing.

The Ming Dynasty Liuhe City Wall in Nanjing is located in Liuhe District, Nanjing. Originally built in the second year of the Shaoxing era during the Southern Song Dynasty (1132), it is a cultural relic protection unit of Nanjing.

The ruins of the Liuhe Ming City Wall are approximately 160 meters long and about 6 meters high, with a top width of 4.8 meters. The outer edge of the top is equipped with crenellations, while the inner side features parapets. Unlike historical "single-sided city walls," both the inner and outer sides of this section were constructed using city wall bricks, preserving many old bricks. Compared to the bricks used in Nanjing’s city walls, those of the Liuhe City Wall are considerably smaller and several levels lower in quality than those of Nanjing’s Ming-era city wall, which served as the capital.

According to data from the Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Map, based on the Liuhe County Annals from the Guangxu era of the Qing Dynasty, the Liuhe City Wall was initially built in the second year of the Shaoxing era during the Southern Song Dynasty (1132) but was abandoned and fell into disrepair in the early Ming Dynasty. In the ninth year of the Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty, the local government of Liuhe rebuilt the rammed earth city wall. The reconstructed wall had a circumference of 1,323.6 zhang (approximately 4,410 meters), a height of 2.5 zhang (approximately 8.33 meters), and as many as 1,647 battlements, roughly forming a square shape, with a moat surrounding the city.

In the 44th year of the Kangxi era of the Qing Dynasty (1705), the Liuhe city wall was damaged by flooding. In the subsequent Yongzheng, Qianlong, Daoguang, Xianfeng, and Guangxu eras, the local government carried out successive repairs to the wall. During the Republican era, after multiple restorations, the Liuhe City Wall had a circumference of 4,410 meters and a height of 8.33 meters. In 1958, the “city wall demolition movement” reached the small city of Liuhe, and most of the city wall was torn down, leaving only a small section remaining.

Although historical records in Liuhe mentioned the existence of a city wall, the actual discovery of its ruins did not occur until around 2006. In 2006, an engineer from the Chuhe River Environmental Improvement Command discovered a section of embankment in the Chuhe River near Yongning Street in Liuhe that appeared to be a city wall ruin. After expert appraisal, it was confirmed that the ruin was about 1 li (approximately 500 meters) in length and constituted the wall foundation, with some city wall bricks still visible in the water. Additionally, at the former Liuhe West Gate Grain Depot near Yongning Street, there was a wall over 100 meters long that was also a remnant of the original city wall. Liuhe cultural relics workers also found during their investigations that many houses in Yongning Street had been built using city wall bricks. In 2006, the Liuhe City Wall was officially designated as a municipal-level cultural relic protection unit of Nanjing.