Xibianmen City Wall Relics Park, Archaeological park featuring Ming Dynasty wall remains in Yuetan Subdistrict, China.
Xibianmen City Wall Relics Park preserves sections of Beijing's ancient fortification system, including stone walls, architectural elements, and structures from imperial times. Information panels explain the construction methods and the original height and thickness of these fortifications.
The surviving wall was built in 1439 as part of Beijing's inner city wall. Its middle section preserves the junction with the outer city wall, and its south end is the remnant platform of the inner city's southwest corner tower, demolished in 1969. The nearby Xibianmen gate belonged to the outer city, added in 1553 and demolished in 1952; it was never part of this wall.
The walls show the craftsmanship of Chinese workers who layered earth and stone into lasting structures. Visitors can understand the building methods that were used across many centuries.
The wall section stands in a triangular plot enclosed on three sides by the Xibianmen bridge roads of the Second Ring Road. Steps added on the east side of the wall in 1988 lead up to the platform, from which visitors enter the reconstructed "Badengyan" arrow tower. The ground around the wall is uneven, so sturdy shoes help.
The park's name is misleading: this stretch of Ming inner-city wall has no connection to the outer-city Xibianmen gate, which stood to the west and was demolished in 1952 as the first of Beijing's gates to go. The wall here was repaired in 1988 with 130,000 new bricks, and seven exposed sections of the wall core were deliberately kept.
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