Nine Dragon Wall

The Nine Dragon Wall of Datong stands on Heyang Street, in the old city, and was built between 1392 and 1396 as the screen wall in front of the residence of Zhu Gui, Prince Dai, the thirteenth son of the Ming founder Zhu Yuanzhang. It is 45.5 metres long, 8 metres high and 2.02 metres thick, and its dragons carry four claws, the mark of a princely house rather than of the emperor. It is the earliest and the largest of the walls of this kind surviving in China, more than three hundred years older than those in the Forbidden City and at Beihai. It was listed as a national key cultural relics protection unit in 2001.