City Wall, Nanjing

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The City Wall of Nanjing was designed by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (r. 1368-1398) after he founded the Ming Dynasty and established Nanjing as the capital 600 years ago. To consolidate his sovereignty and keep out invaders, he adopted the suggestions of advisor Zhu Sheng to build a higher city wall. It took 21 years for the project, which involved 200,000 labourers to move 7 million cubic meters of earth. All this resulted in the wall measuring 33km in length, averaging 12 metres high and 7 metres wide at the top - the longest city wall ever built in the world. About two thirds of it still stands today. Originally, thirteen gates were built through Nanjing’s walls, but this number had grown to eighteen by the end of the Qing dynasty.

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We walked from Yuejiang Temple along the city wall until we could not walk any more. It was, like walking along other city walls a very interesting surreal experience.

There was no cost associated with walking along it!

The city wall of Nanjing was built over 600 years ago in 1386 by over 200,000 people and took over 20 years to complete. It was designed by Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang after he founded the Ming Dynasty. If you take a close look at the bricks, you will see that most of them are stamped with the names of the people who constructed the wall.

City wall in Nanjing is highly recommended while visiting here. It is quite visible in many connecting areas which is between downtown and suburb. The large scale of construction started from Ming Dynasty(600 years ago). In the ancient time, city wall is built up for lining out the city, preventing the invasion of outsider which its function is similiar to the castles in European cities. Due to the historical reasons, many parts of the wall was tore down or was not well-preserved. However, the wall of Nanjing still maintain the record of the LONGEST CITY WALL IN THE WORLD.

When going around attractions, we often can see the City Wall of Nanjing, It was built by Emperor Zhu Yuan Zhang during 1300. But we don’t understand why are there people who do laundry there? mmm…