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World's Longest Ancient City Wall To Apply for World Heritage Listing
Cultural relics researchers in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu province, are busy preparing for a local ancient city wall built in Ming Dynasty (1364-1644) to be listed on the World Heritage List by UNESCO.
The wall was 33.676-km long in perimeter and is believed to be the longest ancient city wall in the world. The wall was first built in 473 BC and was extended several times in Chinese history.
The first emperor of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang built the largest section of the city wall which took more than 20 years to complete. More than 200,000 workers and many skillful craftsmen across the nation were enlisted to build the city wall.
The ancient wall was 14 to 21 meters tall, 14 meters thick at the bottom and 4 to 9 meters thick at the top. All the bricks used for building the city wall were engraved with the date and place as to when and where they were fired, as well as the name of craftsman who made them. The bricks weigh 10 to 20 kg each.
Among the 31 gates at the wall, the most splendid is the Zhonghua Gate, which was once used as a military stronghold and could accommodate more than 3,000 soldiers.
This city wall has been repaired several times. Massive repair work on the wall was done in 1990, 1993 and 1995.
As a renowned historic city, Nanjing was once the capital of 10 dynasties in ancient China.
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