Ruins of Yangzhou City

Ruins of Yangzhou City

The Ruins of Yangzhou City are a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Now a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit, the site is located in the old urban area and northwest suburbs of present-day Yangzhou. It encompasses the remains of Yangzhou’s city walls from the Sui, Tang, and Song dynasties, covering an area of approximately 16 square kilometers. The city sites from various dynasties in Yangzhou overlap one another, with the Sui, Tang, and Song remains relatively well preserved. Since 1987, through scientific and systematic archaeological surveys and excavations, the scale, layout, founding dates, and evolutionary relationships of the Sui, Tang, and Song city ruins in Yangzhou have been largely clarified. The Sui-era Yangzhou City was located on Ping Shan Township atop Shu Gang, built upon the foundation of the Han-era Guangling City. It consisted of the Sui Jiangdu Palace City and East City, with a possible outer city (Luo Cheng) adjacent to Shu Gang. The Jiangdu Palace City had an almost square floor plan, with rammed earth walls preserved underground up to 4 meters in height, a perimeter of 5.1 kilometers, and an area of about 1.8 square kilometers. Its southern wall stretched west from Guanyin Mountain to Dongzhuang, the western wall ran north from Guanyin Mountain to the western bend of the river at Baocheng Village, the northern wall extended east from the western bend through Licun Village then turned toward Yangjiazhuang, while the eastern wall’s boundary remains unexplored. The East City had an irregular polygonal shape, extending east from the Palace City to the area east of Tiefosi Temple, with a perimeter of about 4 kilometers and an area of around 1 square kilometer. The Tang Dynasty Yangzhou City was composed of an inner city (Zi Cheng) and an outer city (Luo Cheng). The inner city served as the administrative district and was built upon the Sui Jiangdu Palace City and East City, featuring an irregular polygonal layout with some sections of the city wall still preserved to a height of about 10 meters. The walls were earthen, with brick cladding at gates and corners, and a moat lay outside the walls. The inner city had one gate on each of its four sides, with a cross-shaped main street running through the gates. The east-west main street was 1,860 meters long and 11 meters wide, while the north-south main street measured 1,400 meters in length and 10 meters in width. The southern gate of the inner city, historically known as the “Zhongshu Gate,” had three passageways and was the only gate connected to the outer city. The outer city was built at the foot of Shu Gang and functioned as the commercial, handicraft, and residential district. It was expanded during the mid-Tang Dynasty and had a rectangular layout, stretching 4,200 meters from north to south and 3,100 meters from east to west, with walls about 9 meters thick. Based on topographical and moat evidence, the outer city may have had 12 gates: three on the south, four each on the east and west, and one on the north. Inside, there were six north-south and fourteen east-west main roads, each 5–10 meters wide. The official canal ran north-south through the city, leading directly to the southeast of the inner city where it met the Zhuo River. Among the Twenty-Four Bridges of the Tang Dynasty, the Guangji Bridge, Xin Bridge, Kaiming Bridge, and Tongsi Bridge were all located on this canal. In the Song Dynasty, Yangzhou had three city walls: the Song Great City, Baoguo City, and Jia City. The Song Great City, also known as the Prefectural City, was an extension of the Wudai Zhou Xiaocheng (Later Zhou Small City). It had a perimeter of 10,110 meters, extending to the ancient canal on the east and south, to Chaoriver on the north, and aligning with the Ming-era old city wall on the west. Today, parts of the rammed earth walls are still preserved at the northwest corner. It had a rectangular layout with a cross-shaped main street that connected to the four city gates. Water gates were located on the west side of each of the north and south city gates, and a market river ran north-south through the city. Baoguo City was built during the Song Baoguo era, with a perimeter of 5,000 meters. It utilized the western half of an existing city and omitted the eastern half, resulting in an area about half that of the inner city. Jia City was constructed during the Southern Song Dynasty's Shaoxing era to connect the Great City with Baoguo City, spanning 2,700 meters in perimeter. A special conservation plan for the site has now been commissioned from Southeast University.

Further Reading:

· First and Second Batches of Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units

· Fourth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units