Xi'an

Farmers sinking a well in 1974 struck a piece of one. Pit 1 is the widest, pit 3 is read as the command post. Every face was modelled differently and every figure painted, though the colour went once air reached it. Forty kilometres east; allow half a day.

The Ming wall runs unbroken for 13.7 kilometres, and the top of it can be ridden all the way round. Two hours or so by bicycle, over brick that punishes the saddle. The south gate at Yongningmen is the easiest place to get up and down.

Xuanzang raised it in 652 for scriptures he brought from India, five storeys then. Around 704 it was rebuilt with ten. Today's seven-storey brick shell is Ming, with a stair to the top. A fountain on the north square plays at set hours and fills the evenings.

Down a lane in the quarter, the Great Mosque has a Chinese timber pavilion where a minaret would be. The prayer hall belongs to worshippers, so visitors stop at the courtyards, while stalls that run loud outside until late go quiet one step past the gate.

A hot spring under Mount Li, known as where Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei wintered. The excavated Tang pools are dry stone basins, so arriving to bathe is a wasted trip. The baths you can sit in are in a separate building on the same grounds.

Tang material dominates: ceramics, gold and silver, wall painting, laid out in order. The murals lifted from Tang tombs are kept in their own hall on a separate ticket. The main building alone takes half a day.

Thousands of inscribed stones stand through the halls like a wood, which is what the name says. The Kaicheng Stone Classics of 837 cut twelve Confucian texts into more than a hundred slabs. Rubbings are still taken here, in view of the visitor.

Once the lights come on the crowd thickens and the pace drops. It is a pedestrian street running south from the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, bronzes of Tang figures down both sides. Performers work every side lane, which is what keeps you standing in one spot.

Decide which peak you are climbing first: the cable cars serve different ones. A granite mountain 120 kilometres east, half an hour by fast train. The plank walk bolted to the cliff is done in a harness. People going opposite ways squeeze past on the boards.

The two towers stand on opposite sides of a junction, traffic circling all round, so you cross by the underpass or not at all. The bell tower dates from 1384 and the drum tower beats at set hours, the plaza between them also the way into the Hui quarter.

A brick pagoda begun in 707. It had 15 storeys until the 1556 earthquake brought down the top two, leaving 13. Locals tell of a crack one quake opened and the next one closed. The Xi'an Museum stands in the same grounds, and one outing covers both.

Tomb of the Han emperor Jing and his empress, twenty minutes' drive out from the airport. In the underground museum you look through glass floors into the pits. The figures are a third of life size and naked, their wooden arms and silk clothes long rotted.

Tang emperor Gaozong and Wu Zetian lie together here, 80 kilometres northwest of Xi'an, inside a whole hill. Where the spirit way ends stands the stele she left blank. Beside it, the 61 stone envoys from foreign lands have almost all lost their heads.

A temple 120 kilometres west of Xi'an. In 1987 the crypt under its fallen pagoda yielded a finger-bone relic of the Buddha and Tang treasure. The new precinct has a vast stupa shaped like praying hands. Gate to stupa is a long haul; many ride electric carts.

A roof over the excavated site of a Yangshao culture village from six thousand years ago. The village moat, round hut floors and urns used to bury children lie as found. It is by the Chan River east of town, an easy stop en route to the Terracotta Army.

Site of the palace where Tang emperors ruled for over two hundred years, just north of the railway station. No buildings survive; the rebuilt platform of the Hanyuan Hall shows the scale. The grounds are too big to walk, and electric carts run.

The Japanese monk Kukai came here in 804 to learn esoteric Buddhism, so many visitors come from Japan. A stele and hall to him stand in the grounds. When the cherry trees bloom, late March to early April, few places in Xi'an rival it for blossom.