Top 10 tourist attractions in Anhui province

Attraction 4

Mingzhongdu Imperial City Ruins National Archaeological Site Park

Address: Fengyang county, Chuzhou city
Opening hours: 9 am-5 pm (closed Mondays)
Admission: Free

Mingzhongdu (literally, the central capital of Ming Dynasty) Imperial City covers an area of 840,000 square meters. Construction began in 1369, but was stopped and abandoned just six years later. Owing to 600 years of turbulent history, today, only a few relics and the ancient city walls remain of this large-scale imperial city.

The Mingzhongdu Imperial City site holds paramount significance in the history of Chinese architecture. It inherited the fundamental structure framework of the “central axis traversing a three-layer-walled city” established by Dadu - the capital city of the preceding Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). The Mingzhongdu site served as a crucial blueprint for subsequent capital cities during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). As ongoing excavations yield more discoveries, striking similarities between the Forbidden City in Beijing and Mingzhongdu in Fengyang continue to emerge.