Lingling (零陵古城) is the old heart of Yongzhou, one of the city's two urban districts and the seat of the ancient prefecture from which the region was governed. Its walls were first raised in 124 BC, and its founding history is second only to Changsha among the cities of Hunan. The name Lingling comes from the legend of the emperor Shun, said to have died at Mount Jiuyi in the south, and of the tears his consorts shed, the source of Yongzhou's older name. It sits on the southern bank of the Xiang where the Xiao River joins it, the junction that gives the whole prefecture its poetic name, Xiaoxiang. Today the district holds more than half a million people and still keeps the administrative town's place in the region.
Lingling was the seat of the prefecture of Yongzhou and keeps the street pattern of that administrative town. Its walls went up in 124 BC, a Han garrison map records its early standing, and it is today one of Yongzhou's two urban districts.