Jīngzhào

Jīngzhào was the Han and Tang name for the metropolitan district around Cháng'ān, and it clung to the city long after the Tang court had left. By 1337 the Yuan had already renamed it Fèngyuán, and in 1369 the Ming made it Xī'ān Prefecture. The new town was built over the Tang imperial city; the Tang pagodas of the Great and Small Wild Goose rose south of its walls, and within them the Forest of Stelae stored the classics cut in stone.

The city's new walls expressed its importance within Ming rule in the northwest. In the 1370s the fortified town was enlarged on the foundations of the Tang imperial city and the Yuan town, with four main gates, moats and towers, and the Drum Tower and Bell Tower rose in the 1380s. In 1378 the Prince of Qin, a son of the first Ming emperor, made the city his seat. The great earthquake of 1556 devastated Shaanxi and killed an enormous number of people. In 1643 the rebel leader Lǐ Zìchéng captured Xi'an, and in 1644 he proclaimed his Shun regime there. The Qing kept the old walls, restoring them in 1781, and built a separate Manchu city beside them in the northeast.