Lintong, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China
秦始皇陵 · Qín Shǐhuáng Líng
A man-made hill over a tomb that has never been opened. Round it are the pits of the emperor's bronze chariots, his acrobats and his officials. It is on the same ticket as the Terracotta Army, and most visitors never come.
Photo: Legolas1024, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
The low wooded hill in front of you is not natural. It was piled up by hand over the burial chamber of Ying Zheng, the king of Qin who conquered six rival states and in 221 BC named himself First Emperor. He began this tomb when he became king at thirteen, and work went on for nearly forty years.
Nobody has dug into it. The clay soldiers that the world knows stand a kilometre and a half to the east, as guards on the road to this hill.
Part of The Terracotta Army and the First Emperor's Tomb. Also there: Terracotta Army Pits.
Lishan Garden is the park round the tomb mound. It is on the same through ticket as the pit museum, with a free shuttle between them. A sightseeing cart inside the park costs extra.
| Part | Ticket |
|---|---|
| The tomb mound | Included; seen from outside only |
| Bronze chariots museum | Included |
| The acrobats' pit (K9901) | Included |
| The civil officials' pit (K0006) | Included |
| The pit museum: Pits 1, 2 and 3 | Same ticket, free shuttle; it has its own page |
About a hundred years after the burial, the historian Sima Qian described what lay inside: models of palaces and towers, rivers and seas of mercury kept flowing by machines, the heavens shown above and the earth below, and crossbows set to shoot anyone who broke in.
Tests of the soil on the mound have found far more mercury than in the land around. So part of his account, at least, may be true.
Chinese archaeologists have decided not to open the chamber until they can be sure of preserving what is in it. The paint on the clay soldiers faded within minutes of being uncovered, and that lesson has not been forgotten.
What you can see here comes from three of the smaller pits round the mound: two bronze chariots at half size, clay acrobats, and clay officials.
The pits lie east of the tomb. The mound itself is over a kilometre to the west, today a low wooded hill. The whole funerary park covers about 56 square kilometres.
The historian Sima Qian wrote that inside, mercury was made to flow as the rivers and the sea, with the heavens above and the earth below, and that more than 700,000 men were set to work. Since the 1980s several surveys have measured strong mercury readings at the centre of the mound. Whether it is ancient mercury is still debated.
Remote sensing in 2002–2003 traced the extent of the chamber and two entrance ramps, east and west. With today's methods no one can promise that what is inside would survive being brought out, so there is no plan to excavate.
In 1980 two large painted bronze chariots were uncovered west of the tomb mound, one behind the other in a single timber chamber. They came out in more than three thousand pieces: 1,325 for the first and 1,685 for the second. Restoration took until 1988.
Chariot 1 is open on all sides under a tall bronze parasol. Its driver stands, with a bronze crossbow, shield and arrows to hand; it is thought to be the escort that cleared the road. Chariot 2 has two compartments: the driver kneels in front, and the closed cabin behind is for the master.
They are made at half the size of real chariots and horses, from more than 7,000 parts between them, and weigh 2,302 kg, of which over 14 kg is gold and silver fittings.
This pit is in Lishan Garden, south-east of the tomb mound, between the inner and outer walls of the park. It covers about 700 square metres. A trial dig in 1999 found eleven painted figures and a large bronze tripod. The whole pit was excavated again in 2011–2013 and has given up close to thirty figures, 25 of them restored by 2022.
They look nothing like the army. They are stripped to the waist, and each holds a different pose. Scholars think they are the court's entertainers: acrobats, wrestlers and strongmen of the kind who lifted bronze tripods. The pits to the east stand for the emperor's army. This one stands for the people who amused him.
One figure, number 28, lies on its back. It was pieced together in 2022 from dozens of fragments and is 154 cm long. On the paint of its belly the restorers found the print of three fingers side by side.
Also in Lishan Garden, at the south-west corner of the inner wall and close to the tomb mound. It was found in 2000, covers about 410 square metres, and its hall opened in 2011. It holds twelve figures, eight of them officials standing with their hands tucked into their sleeves.
Look at the belt on the right side: a small knife and a whetstone hang from it. In the Qin (221–207 BC) people wrote on strips of bamboo and scraped mistakes off with a knife, so this is a writing kit. A gap between the left arm and the body probably held a bundle of the strips.
Most pits in the park were burned at the fall of the Qin. This one was not, so its roof timbers and floor boards survive, and traces of paint remain on the faces.
| Year | Here | Elsewhere |
|---|---|---|
| 246 BC | Ying Zheng becomes king of Qin at 13; work on his tomb begins | In India, Ashoka is setting up pillars carved with his edicts |
| 221 BC | Qin conquers the six states and unifies script, weights and measures | Rome and Carthage are between their first two wars |
| 218 BC | Tomb-building and imperial tours go on together | Hannibal takes his army and elephants across the Alps |
| 212 BC | Work starts on the Epang Palace | Archimedes is killed by a Roman soldier at Syracuse |
| 210 BC | The First Emperor dies on tour and is buried at Mount Li | Rome is fighting Carthage in Spain |
One line to remember: the year Hannibal crossed the Alps, this clay army was being fired at the foot of Mount Li.
These are stories people tell about this place. They are legends, not history, and each one says where it comes from.
When the emperor had been laid in the chamber, the craftsmen who had built its machines and knew its treasures were still inside. The inner gate was shut and the outer gate let down, and none of them came out.
Source: Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, about 100 BC
Xiang Yu set three hundred thousand men to carry off the treasure. After thirty days they had still not emptied the tomb.
Source: Li Daoyuan, Commentary on the Water Classic, about AD 520
A shepherd boy lost a sheep down a hole in the mound. He went in after it with a torch, and the fire he dropped burned the emperor's coffin.
Source: Ban Gu, Book of Han, first century AD
Later, people who live here will be able to add the stories they grew up with, and say which of these they have heard.
Last checked 2026-11-11. Travel and news reports, not the site's own notices.
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