Terra Cotta Army, China

Terracotta Army, Xi’an

The farmers who sank a well shaft in March 1974 outside Xi’an were not thinking about archaeology. They hit a fragment of fired clay and called the authorities, setting off one of the largest archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. What they had broken through was the edge of Pit 1 - the main battle formation of Qin Shi Huang’s funerary army, buried for 2,200 years.

The scale of what lies underground is still not fully known. The terracotta warriors are a fraction of an estimated 56-square-kilometre mausoleum complex. Qin Shi Huang, who unified China in 221 BC and died in 210 BC, filled his burial precinct with a bureaucracy of the dead: officials, acrobats, officials’ stables, and the warriors in their thousands. The central burial mound - the actual tomb - has never been excavated. Ancient sources describe rivers of mercury flowing through palaces beneath it, and scientific testing has confirmed unusually high mercury concentrations in the soil.

The Three Pits

Each pit is housed in a climate-controlled building. This matters: when figures are first exposed to air, the traces of original polychrome paint - red, blue, green, black - disappear within minutes. Excavation continues slowly in Pit 2 for this reason; visitors can sometimes watch archaeologists working at the edges.

Pit 1 is the one that lands. It is 230 metres long, housing around 6,000 soldiers arranged in eleven corridors separated by earthen ramps. The scale reads best from the far end looking back down the length: a frozen army, life-sized, no two faces identical. Each soldier’s features appear individually modelled, though scholars now believe the faces were assembled from standardised component moulds in different combinations. The individual detail is still remarkable - the upturned shoe soles, the braided hairstyles, the texture of armour plates.

Pit 2 is militarily more complex, with cavalry, infantry, archers in kneeling formation, and war chariots arranged in tactical groupings. The display includes several fully restored individual figures displayed in glass cases close up, which gives a better sense of the original colour and detail than the distant overview of Pit 1.

Pit 3 is the command post - 68 figures arranged around a war chariot, representing the high command rather than the fighting troops. It is the most intimate of the three.

Tickets and Getting There

Current entry is 150 CNY during peak season (March through November) and 120 CNY in winter, including the shuttle bus between the two main sites. The museum sits 35km east of Xi’an city centre. Bus 306 from the train station takes about an hour and costs around 8 CNY. Taxi or tour bus is faster. Go early: Pit 1 becomes dense by 10am on weekends, and the walkways fill with tour groups whose audio guides compete audibly. Arrive by 08:30 if possible.

Audio guides in English are available for hire at the entrance and are genuinely useful - the recorded commentary adds layers to what the eye sees without being over-explained.

In late 2025, 110 newly unearthed artifacts from ongoing excavations were sent on a North American touring exhibition, the first time that many of those specific pieces had left China. The ongoing excavation work in Pit 2 is part of the same long effort.

Xi’an

The terracotta army is reason enough to fly to Xi’an, but the city rewards more than a day trip from the site.

The Tang Dynasty city walls are complete - a 14km perimeter circuit that can be cycled in about two hours. Bike rental from the South Gate costs around 45 CNY per hour; electric bikes are also available. The view from the top looking down into both the interior city and the modern sprawl outside is a good orientation for the scale of the place.

The Muslim Quarter around the Great Mosque is the right neighbourhood for eating. The mosque was built in 742 AD under the Tang Dynasty and uses Chinese rather than Arab architectural forms - wooden pavilion buildings, traditional Chinese garden layouts, Chinese script alongside Arabic. The courtyard is open to non-Muslim visitors for around 25 CNY. The surrounding streets serve biang biang noodles (wide hand-pulled noodles in chilli oil), rou jia mo (braised pork stuffed into flatbread), and excellent pomegranate juice. Eat at the street level, not in the restaurants aimed at tourists.

The Shaanxi History Museum is free with registration for foreign visitors and has one of the best Tang Dynasty collections anywhere - gold and silver vessels, glazed ceramics, Buddhist sculpture. The premium galleries require a separate timed ticket, worth it for the Tang gold.

Getting to Xi’an

Domestic high-speed rail from Beijing is 4.5 hours; from Shanghai around 6 hours. Xi’an North Station serves the high-speed network and is connected to the city centre by Metro Line 2. Flying into Xi’an Xianyang Airport (XIY) is also practical from major Chinese and some international Asian cities. The city centre has plenty of accommodation across all price ranges; staying near the Bell Tower keeps most major sites within walking distance or a short metro ride.