Baliancheng: Reading the Plan of a Balhae Capital

Baliancheng lies on the Hunchun River plain, where fields and water channels now cross the site. Archaeologists measured an outer enclosure about 707 by 745 metres and an inner rectangle about 216 by 318 metres. The smaller enclosure sits within the larger one, separating a central palace area from a broad outer city.

The site’s plan has been pieced together across generations of survey and excavation. A 2013 review of early twentieth-century fieldwork notes that agricultural changes and water projects altered the landscape after the 1950s, making older maps useful alongside later excavation. Archaeological teams working from 2004 to 2009 mapped the walls, confirmed the southern gates and traced inner divisions. The city’s layout survives in measured lines and low foundations across the cultivated plain.

The southern gates form a route into the inner city. The outer gate has one passage. The inner gate stands on a wide platform, with three stairways on each side. North of it, excavators identified palace foundations along the city’s central axis. The largest platform measures about 42 metres by 26 metres and rises as much as two metres above the field.

A second building group lies farther north. A main hall and side halls were joined by corridors, while covered galleries ran along the east and west. This arrangement enclosed courtyards and a broad forecourt. Seen as a plan, the complex guides movement from outer walls to gate, stair and raised hall—a sequence built into the city’s architecture.

Excavations recovered large numbers of brick and ceramic roof-tile fragments. A foundation shows where a building stood; roof material records the work above it—the fired tiles, shaped ends and repeated units needed to cover a hall. The excavators used these fragments to study construction methods and compare the palace buildings with other Balhae sites.

Together, brick and tile give the foundations a material vocabulary. Gate platforms, corridors and courtyards reveal the plan, while roof fragments point to buildings that once rose above the ground. Archaeologists combine these objects with soil layers and building remains to understand how the site was constructed and used.

Historical sources place Balhae’s Eastern Capital at Baliancheng from 785 to 794. The capital’s plan differs from the better-known Upper Capital: Baliancheng has two principal enclosures, while the Upper Capital used three. Both organized royal space through walls, gates and courts, but the Hunchun site had its own measured arrangement.

The city’s surviving evidence is distributed across the plain: enclosure walls, southern gates, raised palace foundations, corridor lines and roof fragments. Surveyors’ maps and modern excavations together recover a political center that the landscape no longer displays as standing architecture. Baliancheng’s identity as an Eastern Capital rests on the relation between those physical remains and the historical record.