Ruins of the Former Imperial City in Fengyang County of Anhui Basically Excavated

Launched in the second half of 2015, archaeological exploration and excavation of the central axis of the ruins of the former imperial city in Fengyang County of Anhui have been basically completed, with an area of 1,800 square meters excavated. The restoration project of the central axis program will reproduce the look of the “Forbidden City” of the Ming Dynasty.

There are three city walls in the ruins, thus forming the outer city, the middle city and the inner city. The circumferences of the three cities are about 30 kilometers, 8 kilometers and 4 kilometers respectively. As the imperial city and cultural relics under national protection, the 15-meter-high inner city is square in shape, with a bottom width of 7 meters and a top width of 6 meters. And its total area is 120,000 larger than the Forbidden City in Beijing.

Ruins to be excavated include Fengtian Temple, Chengtian Gate, Southeast Watchcorner, city walls and city roads. So far, road traces, building bases and foundations white marble stones have been cleared.

According to the project director, some excavated exquisite and vivid stone carvings are rare in China, and protection and rescue repairs of many ruins are under way.

In the second half of 2016, more reinforcement and repair projects will be launched. In 2017, construction projects of the central axis will be initiated on the basis of the archaeological work, and environmental management and water governance of the ancient city will be carried out. Fengyang plans to invest 1.27 billion yuan in building the ruins into an urban site park that covers an area of over 380 hectares.

In China’s history, after Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, ascent the throne, Nanjing was built as the southern capital and Linhao (today’s Fengyang) as the middle capital. Since it hadn’t been in construction and use for a long time, the middle capital didn’t become a political center. However, it held an important position in capital construction histories of China and even the world, and its urban planning and palace layout directly influenced the layout of Beijing City in the Ming Dynasty.