Qufu Lu State Ancient City National Archaeological Site Park

Qufu Lu State Ancient City National Archaeological Site Park
曲阜鲁国故城考古遗址公园

Address: Qufu city, Jining city, Shandong province
Hours: 7:30 am-4:30 pm
General admission: Free

Occupying the eastern and northern parts of today’s Qufu city, East China’s Shandong province, this ancient city was the longest-lived of the capitals of the states in the Zhou Dynasty (c.11th-256 BC). It was built as the capital of the Lu State (1043 BC-AD 256) in the early Western Zhou Dynasty (c.11th century-771 BC) and witnessed 873 years of vicissitudes as a feudal capital.
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An ancient city still belonging to the fief of State during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24), It went through eight reconstructions before being designated as a county seat, but the county seat was relocated in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) and the city fell into oblivion under Japanese hands in in 1940. The Japanese conducted a small scale excavation of the site in that year.

Shaped as an irregular rectangle, the ancient city covers an area of nearly 10 square kilometers with a perimeter of 11,771 meters. It has 11 city gates and a water-supply system ranging from east to west. It is based on the principles established by the Rites of Zhou (Zhou Li), and has a clear and neat layout in which the palace and market are situated in the north, the ancestral temple in the left (southeast of the palace), and the altar to the gods of earth and grain in the right (southwest of the palace).

The planning area of the archaeological park is 86 hectares with the Zhougong Temple Palace as the core area. Meanwhile, the Lu State Ancient City Site Museum, the sites of the Wangfutai Burial Area, Wuyu Terrace and Lixin Lianzhong Iron Smelting are also major attractions of the park.