One night. The Terracotta Army is the half-day round trip; otherwise the city wall, the Muslim Quarter and the Bell Tower are all walkable.
Replaces Luoyang. One night only, and now a measured one: you land 12:30 on the 21st and G2456 leaves Xi'an North at 15:15 on the 22nd. That is one afternoon and one morning, and the morning ends at a ticket barrier. The Terracotta Army is a half-day round trip 40 km east, so it is that or the walls, not both.
Cool dry continental autumn with a big day-night swing. Layer up.
Across the street from the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, south of the city wall in Qujiang. The nearest metro stations are Dayanta (Lines 3 and 4) and Weiyi Street (Line 2). Xianyang Airport is 41 km away and the hotel runs no airport shuttle.
A complete Ming-dynasty rampart built 1374-1378, 13.74 km around and 12 m high, with a top surface 12-14 m wide. The most intact city wall of its kind left in China.
Rent a bike on top and ride the full 13.7 km circuit in about 100 minutes - the best 90 minutes in Xi'an. Mount at South Gate (Yongning Men). Book online, up to 7 days ahead.
The lanes northwest of the Drum Tower that form the historic Hui Muslim quarter, settled from Tang-dynasty Silk Road trade. As of 2003 it held around 32,361 Muslims, about half of Xi'an's Muslim population.
Yangrou paomo, roujiamo, biangbiang noodles, liangpi, hulutou, mahua. Beiyuanmen is the tourist spine - walk a block west into Xiyangshi or Dapiyuan for where locals eat. Stalls expect Alipay or WeChat Pay. The Great Mosque hides down Huajue Lane off it.
Opened in 1991 in a Tang-revival building, holding over 370,000 catalogued items including nearly 600 Tang tomb murals and the Hejiacun hoard. The agate rhyton carved as a beast's head is its signature object.
Free entry is the problem, not the perk: the daily reservation quota is stripped within minutes of release, so somebody has to be on the WeChat account the moment tickets drop. The ¥30 Hejiacun treasure hall is bought inside and is the part worth paying for.
The joint tomb of Emperor Jing of Han (d. 141 BCE) and Empress Wang, with 86 satellite pits holding more than 50,000 miniature figures. The 50 cm figurines are bald, naked and armless because their silk clothes and moving wooden arms rotted away, leaving only ceramic torsos.
Stranger than the Terracotta Army and nearly empty by comparison. The hall is entirely underground: you walk in shoe covers on glass floors directly over the open pits, looking down at thousands of tiny limbless bodies. On the Xianyang airport road, about 20 minutes from the terminal - which makes it the one thing that fits around a flight.
Paomo house on the Bell and Drum Tower Square, founded 1920. Load a refundable pay card, tear the flatbread into small pieces yourself, and order mutton or beef paomo.
Dumpling house on the Bell and Drum Tower Square, founded 1936. Book the upstairs dumpling banquet for the group; the ground floor serves plain dumplings a la carte.
Century-old roujiamo counter on Zhubashi Street, a short walk from the Bell Tower. Order the braised pork roujiamo with mung bean porridge; expect a takeaway queue.
Shaanxi cuisine house founded 1929, rebuilt on East Street in 2021 with a Shaanxi cuisine museum inside. Order hulu (gourd-shaped) chicken and three-fresh thick soup.
VeinLab未来俱乐部. Small underground livehouse on Xishi 2nd Road in Lianhu, south-west of the old city wall near the Great Tang West Market. Mostly post-rock, rock and indie gigs. Address: 西安市莲湖区西市二路西市佳郡东门南5米 (5 m south of the east gate of the Xishi Jiajun complex). The map pin marks the road, not the door, so show the driver the Chinese.
Small livehouse, Lianhu. Address: 西安市莲湖区西市二路西市佳郡东门南5米 (5 m south of the east gate of Xishi Jiajun, Xishi 2nd Road). Pin is on Xishi 2nd Road, not the door.
Historic hot-spring complex at the northern foot of Mount Li, ~25 km east of Xi'an, Shaanxi. Three millennia of imperial use (Zhou, Qin, Han, Tang). Tang romance of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei. Site of the 1936 Xi'an Incident.
Xi'an, Lintong. Tang hot-spring palace, and the room where Chiang Kai-shek was seized in 1936. Six km from the Terracotta Army - pair them.
A 36 m timber-and-brick tower built in 1384 at the crossing of the old city's four main streets, now marooned on a traffic roundabout. Its square base covers 1,377 sq m.
Reached through the underground subway, not across the road. The ¥50 combined ticket with the Drum Tower saves ¥10 and must be used the same day. Lit after dark and free to photograph from the roundabout.
Built in 1380, four years before the Bell Tower, carrying 24 small drums inscribed with the 24 solar terms of the traditional calendar. Morning bell, evening drum was the old timekeeping pair.
About 350 m west of the Bell Tower and the gateway arch into the Muslim Quarter, so it lands on the way to dinner rather than needing its own trip. Same ¥50 combo ticket.
A 64.1 m, seven-storey brick pagoda first built in 652 CE so the monk Xuanzang could store the Sanskrit sutras he carried back from India, rebuilt in 704 and refaced under the Ming. UNESCO-listed in 2014 as part of the Silk Roads corridor.
Ten yuan is close to free, so worth it even on a tight night. It stands at the head of Datang Everbright City, the vast neon Tang-themed mall, which makes pagoda-plus-strip a decent late evening. Open 08:30-17:00.
The Communist Party's legal public liaison office in Nationalist-held Xi'an from 1937 to 1946. Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi and Peng Dehuai all worked or stayed here, and it was the funnel every foreign volunteer passed through on the way to Yan'an.
Preserved rooms with original furniture rather than a museum fit-out. Free but requires booking, closed Mondays, 09:00-17:00. Walkable from the Bell Tower in about 25 minutes.
Funerary sculptures of Qin Shi Huang's army, Lintong District, Xi'an. Buried with the first emperor of China. UNESCO.
Xi'an, Lintong. The one thing everybody knows. 40 km east of the city, real-name online booking only - reserve with passport numbers before you land.
A 148 m stupa completed in 2009 in the shape of two enormous hands pressed together in prayer, designed by C. Y. Lee, architect of Taipei 101. It houses a finger bone venerated as the Buddha's, found in 1987 in a sealed Tang crypt inside eight nested caskets.
A 35-storey concrete prayer gesture at the end of a runway-sized processional. About 120 km west of Xi'an, two hours each way, so it cannot survive a single night in the city - it is here for a future trip or a schedule change. The relic itself is only raised on the 1st and 15th of the lunar month; otherwise you see a replica.
Sacred mountain near Huayin in Shaanxi, ~120 km east of Xi'an. Famous for treacherous trails including the cliffside Plank Walk along near-vertical rock. Nicknamed No.1 Steepest Mountain Under Heaven.
Mount Hua: the plank walk bolted to a cliff, 120 km east of Xi'an. A full day, which one night in the city does not have.