Xi'an: The Walled City, the Terracotta Army and Where to Base Yourself

Overview

Xi’an was Chang’an, capital of China through the Han and Tang dynasties and the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, and the old core still shows it: a rectangular walled city with the Bell Tower at its centre and the four cardinal gates lined up on the compass. What draws most visitors is largely outside the city proper — the Terracotta Army sits on the eastern plain, roughly an hour out — but Xi’an itself is a genuinely large modern metropolis, not a preserved relic wrapped around a single attraction. The old walled centre is compact and walkable; the city around it is not, and where you sleep should follow from which of those two experiences you actually came for.

Where to stay

Inside the wall — Bell Tower & Drum Tower

This is the old city’s true centre, where the two towers face each other across a roundabout and the wall’s four main gates are all a short taxi or metro ride away. Stay here if you want everything on foot — the wall itself, the Muslim Quarter, the Forest of Steles Museum and Xi’an’s main shopping streets are all within walking distance. The trade-off is that this is the most expensive, most touristed pocket of the city, and the streets closest to the towers stay loud with traffic and crowds well into the evening.

The Muslim Quarter — Huimin Jie & Beiyuanmen

Just northwest of the Drum Tower, this is the neighbourhood of Xi’an’s Hui Muslim community, and it is the single best reason to base yourself near the centre: skewers, hand-pulled noodles and lamb stews cooked on the street, under a mosque built in Chinese temple style rather than the domes a visitor might expect. Stay here to eat well without moving. The trade-off is that the main lanes turn into a genuine tourist gauntlet by evening — smoke, crowds, hawking — and this is not a place to expect a quiet night’s sleep.

South Gate & Shuyuanmen

South Gate (Nanmen) is the wall’s grandest gate and the quieter, more dignified end of the old city — Shuyuanmen, the old book street behind the Confucian Temple, runs from here, and the Forest of Steles Museum is a short walk off it. Stay here if you want to be inside the wall without the Muslim Quarter’s crowds, and don’t mind a slightly longer walk to the nightlife. The trade-off is that this side of the centre goes quiet early, and you’ll be walking or taking a short cab for a livelier evening.

Qujiang New District & the Big Wild Goose Pagoda

South of the wall, this is Xi’an’s modern face: wide boulevards, the Shaanxi History Museum, and the Tang-themed Big Wild Goose Pagoda with its plaza. Hotels here tend to be newer and roomier than anything inside the wall. Stay here if space and modern comfort matter more to you than atmosphere, or if the museum and the pagoda are your priority. The trade-off is distance: it’s several kilometres from the old centre and the Muslim Quarter, so you’re committing to a metro ride or a taxi every time you cross town, and the Terracotta Army coaches don’t leave from here.

When to go

Spring (April–May) and autumn (September–October) are the most comfortable months, and the best for walking the wall and queuing outdoors at the Terracotta Army site. Summer is hot and humid, the heat held in by the Wei River valley. Winter is cold and dry, and Xi’an sits in a basin ringed by the Qinling Mountains that traps haze along with the cold — expect grey, smoggy skies more often than not. Avoid Chinese New Year and the October Golden Week if you can: both are peak domestic travel weeks, and the wall, the Muslim Quarter and the Terracotta Army all get seriously crowded.

Getting there & around

Xianyang International Airport lies northwest of the city; an airport intercity rail line runs in to Xi’an North Railway Station, and a taxi into the centre takes the better part of an hour in ordinary traffic. That North station, note, is not the same as Xi’an Railway Station by the wall’s north gate — the North station handles high-speed rail, the old station handles conventional trains, and the two sit a fair distance apart, linked by metro. The metro network itself is straightforward and covers the walled centre, the edge of the Muslim Quarter, Qujiang and both stations, but it doesn’t reach the Terracotta Army: that is a coach or taxi ride of an hour or so out to Lintong, with tourist coaches running from the main railway station’s square. Mount Hua, the sacred and famously sheer mountain east of the city, is a workable day trip by high-speed train from Xi’an North. Inside the wall, skip a car entirely — the old city is built for walking, and renting a bike on the rampart to ride the full loop — about fourteen kilometres, rented by the hour with a deposit — is one of the things worth doing here for its own sake.

Practicalities

China runs on two apps for nearly everything — Alipay and WeChat Pay — and cash is close to useless in practice: taxis, street stalls and metro gates all expect a phone tap or a QR code, so set one of the two up, with an international card linked, before you arrive rather than after you land and find you need it. Most Western apps and sites — Google, Gmail, WhatsApp, Instagram, foreign maps and news — are blocked outright; sorting out access before you leave is far easier than trying to once you’re already relying on your phone. Entry itself runs on more than one track: some nationalities can enter visa-free or on a short transit window, others need a full visa arranged with weeks of lead time, and which of those applies to you is worth settling before you book flights, not after. Xi’an is generally safe and easy to navigate once you’re set up, though English is limited outside hotels and the main sights. On food, the city’s own dish is roujiamo — meat braised and chopped into a griddled flatbread, sometimes described as a Chinese hamburger. Alongside it, order yangrou paomo, a mutton and bread soup you crumble the bread into yourself, and biangbiang noodles, hand-pulled and named for a character too complicated to type. All three are Xi’an’s own, not generic Chinese fare, and worth seeking out over anything aimed purely at tourists.