Xi'an City Wall is the most intact and largest city wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China. It was first built from the 3^rd to the 11^th (1370-1378) of the Hongwu reign in the Ming Dynasty on the original site of the imperial walls of Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which used to be prefectural city of Xi'an. Ming Emperor Chengzu, Zhu Yuanzhang, conferred King of Qin on his second son, who lived and dealt with official affairs in the same city (Xi'an). As a result, the city wall is in a large scale and very solid. Through the repairs and enlargements during the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the city wall is still well preserved.

The city walls are built with yellow earth in separated layer. The bottommost layer is rammed with limes, earth and sticky rice and it is very solid. The eastern wall is 2,590 meters long; the western one is 2,631 meters, the southern one is 3,441 meters and the northern one is 3,244 meters. The perimeter of the walls is 11.9 kilometers and the wall is 12 meters high and 16.5 meters deep. There is an area of 12 square kilometers inside the city. On each side of the city there is a gate: the eastern gate is named Changle; the western one is Anding; the southern one is Yongning and the northern one is Anyuan. Outside each gate there is a Tower of Shooting Arrow, inside which there is a city tower. Between them there is an enceinte. The city tower is 33 meters high, 40 meters wide, and is double-eaved with a gable and hip roof and cloisters.

The Tower of Shooting Arrow is a single-eaved building, which may be divided into four parts inside and is covered by 48 loopholes outside to shoot arrows. Inside the city wall there are six horse ways for the soldiers and horses to go up to the wall. There are also some defense facilities -- the watchtowers. The distance between two towers is 120 meters, which is the effective shooting range of some weapons such as arrows, blunderbuss and so on. The city moat is more than 20 meters wide, ten meters high, together with the city walls to form a complete defensive system.