Landmark Asia
Great Wall of China
The Great Wall of China is a very, very long wall. It climbs up and down green hills. Soldiers once kept watch from its towers.
The Great Wall is not one wall but many walls, built over about 2,000 years across northern China. The best-kept part, built under the Ming emperors, runs about 8,850 kilometers, with watchtowers, gates and signal towers along the way.
The Great Wall is a system of border defenses built and rebuilt from the 7th century BCE to the 17th century CE. Qin Shi Huang linked older walls after 221 BCE; most of what stands today is Ming work (1368 to 1644). All sections ever built add up to about 21,196 km.
Photo: Photo by CEphoto, Uwe Aranas or alternatively © CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Discover the Great Wall
The Great Wall is in China.
It is very long and very old. It goes up steep hills and down into valleys. Towers stand along the top. Long ago, soldiers watched from the towers. Today, people walk along it and look at the view.
The Great Wall of China is really many walls, built by different rulers over about 2,000 years across northern China. They were built to guard the northern border.
The longest and best-kept wall was built under the Ming emperors, between 1368 and 1644. It runs about 8,850 kilometers from east to west, often following the tops of hills and mountains. About a quarter of that line is not wall at all but natural barriers, such as rivers and steep ridges. In 1987 UNESCO named the Great Wall a World Heritage Site.
Britannica describes the Great Wall as numerous walls, many running parallel, built over some two millennia across northern China and southern Mongolia. The best-preserved line dates from the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) and runs about 8,850 km (5,500 miles) from Mount Hu near Dandong in Liaoning to Jiayu Pass in Gansu. About one-fourth of that length is natural barriers such as rivers and ridges, about 70 percent is built wall, and the rest is ditches or moats.
Added together, all sections ever built come to about 21,196 km (13,171 miles), counting overlapping sections that were rebuilt. UNESCO, which inscribed the wall in 1987, describes it as the great military defense project of successive Chinese empires and says that by the Ming dynasty the wall had become the world's largest military structure.
- Where
- Across northern China, from the coast in the east to Gansu province in the west
- Ming wall
- about 8,850 km (5,500 miles)
- All sections ever built
- about 21,196 km (13,171 miles)
- World Heritage Site
- since 1987
Two thousand years of building
The first walls were built a very long time ago.
Later, a ruler joined many walls together. Hundreds of years after that, the Ming rulers built the strong stone wall we see today.
About 2,700 years ago, kingdoms in China began building walls to protect their lands. In 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang united China and became its first emperor. He sent a general, Meng Tian, to join the old walls in the north into one long line.
Later rulers kept building, repairing and moving the walls. The Ming dynasty, which ruled from 1368 to 1644, kept strengthening the wall throughout its rule. Most of the Great Wall that stands today was built during the reign of one Ming emperor, the Hongzhi emperor, from 1487 to 1505.
Large parts of the fortification system date from the 7th to the 4th century BCE, when rival states such as Chu, Qi, Wei, Zhao, Qin and Yan built walls against one another and against northern peoples. Britannica dates Chu's "Square Wall" to about the 7th century BCE and Yan's Northern Wall, the last of that period, to 290 BCE.
After unifying China in 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang removed the walls between the former states and sent General Meng Tian to garrison the north and link the walls of Qin, Yan and Zhao into the "10,000-Li Long Wall." That work began about 214 BCE and lasted a decade. Ming rulers strengthened the wall without pause; most of today's wall dates from the Hongzhi emperor (1487 to 1505). Under the Qing (1644 to 1911/12) it was repaired less often and gradually fell into ruin.
Who built it, and how
Many, many people built the wall.
Soldiers and workers carried earth, stones and bricks. In some places they pressed earth down hard to make the wall. In other places they used big stones and bricks.
The wall was built by huge numbers of people. Under the first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and workers who were made to work on the project built and joined the walls.
Builders used whatever was close by. In the western deserts, they pounded earth hard between wooden boards, a method called rammed earth, or used mud bricks. Near Badaling, close to Beijing, the wall was covered with stone. On average the wall itself stands 7 to 8 meters tall, a little lower on steep hills.
Britannica records that hundreds of thousands of soldiers and conscripted workers labored on the Qin linking project, which began about 214 BCE. UNESCO notes that building the wall meant suffering and the transfer of populations, and that the wall became one of the essential references of Chinese literature, from Tch'en Lin's "Soldier's Ballad" (about 200 CE) to the poems of Tu Fu (712 to 770).
Construction depended on local materials: tamped earth packed between wooden boards, adobe bricks, a mix of brick and stone, rocks, or pilings and planks. Some stretches reused river dikes or let cliffs and gorges do the work. In the western deserts the walls were often simple rammed earth and adobe; UNESCO highlights Western Han rammed-earth sections still standing in Gansu. Many eastern ramparts, such as those near Badaling, were faced with stone. Britannica gives the wall itself as usually about 6.5 m wide at the base and 5.8 m at the top, with an average height of 7 to 8 m.
Towers, gates and signals
The wall has a path along the top.
There are towers where soldiers kept watch. There are big gates where people went through. On hilltops, signal towers sent messages with fire at night and smoke in the day.
The Great Wall is more than a wall. Along the top runs a walkway, with a tall outer edge full of gaps for watching. Every 200 to 300 meters a raised platform sticks out, so guards could see far along the wall. At Badaling, many of these platforms had two floors, with room below for more than 10 soldiers.
At important places there were passes, strong forts with gates where merchants and travelers could cross. Signal towers stood on hilltops. Guards sent messages from tower to tower with fires or lanterns at night and smoke in the daytime, and sometimes with flags.
UNESCO lists the wall's main body as walls, horse tracks, watchtowers and shelters, plus fortresses and passes. On the outward side of the top stood crenels about 2 m high, with openings for watching. Platforms projecting from the wall every 200 to 300 m gave defenders a view along its face; some had huts called pufang to shelter guards in storms, and at Badaling they commonly had two stories with room for more than 10 soldiers.
Passes were fortresses at key points such as trade routes. Their ramparts were faced with large bricks and stones over a filling of earth and crushed stone, with ramps for horses, ladders for soldiers and a gate tower used as a watchtower and command post. Signal towers, often on hilltops, passed military messages by beacon fires or lanterns at night and smoke by day, as well as by banners, clappers or guns. In the Ming period the wall was divided into nine defense zones, the Nine Border Garrisons.
- Width (usual)
- about 6.5 m at the base, 5.8 m at the top
- Height
- 7 to 8 m on average
- Platforms
- every 200 to 300 m
The Great Wall today
Today, the Great Wall is a place to visit.
Many people walk on it near the city of Beijing. Some old parts have been rebuilt, and people visit them.
Long stretches of the wall are now in ruins or have disappeared, but other parts have been carefully rebuilt. The best-known section is at Badaling, about 70 kilometers northwest of Beijing. It was rebuilt in the late 1950s, and thousands of visitors from China and other countries walk along it every day.
China has special rules to protect the wall, written in 2006. UNESCO says that tourist buildings and a cable car at Badaling have spoiled some of the view there, and that unsuitable new tourist buildings could harm the wall's setting.
Roads have been cut through the wall in several places and vast sections suffered centuries of neglect; in the 1970s a stretch near Simatai was taken apart for building materials and later rebuilt. Restored sections include Jiayu Pass in the west, Huangya Pass, Mutianyu (about 90 km northeast of Beijing) and Badaling (about 70 km northwest), rebuilt in the late 1950s and now visited by thousands of people from China and abroad every day.
Every component of the wall is listed as a state or provincial priority protected site, and the Regulations on the Protection of the Great Wall (2006) set out how it is conserved. UNESCO's assessment notes that tourist facilities and a cable car have harmed the visual integrity of the wall at Badaling, and that the setting is vulnerable to inappropriate tourism construction.
Amazing facts
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Part of the Great Wall is made of hills and rivers.
About a quarter of the Ming wall's line is not a wall at all, but rivers and steep mountain ridges.
Roughly one-fourth of the Ming line consists solely of natural barriers such as rivers and ridges; about 70 percent is built wall.
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You cannot see the wall from the Moon with just your eyes.
People often say you can see the Great Wall from the Moon, but astronauts said they could not see it with their eyes from there.
The claim that the wall is visible from the Moon is false: astronauts reported it was not visible to the naked eye from the Moon, and it is only sometimes visible from low orbit.
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Some towers had room for more than 10 soldiers.
At Badaling, many lookout platforms on the wall had two floors, with room for more than 10 soldiers on the lower floor.
Platforms at Badaling commonly had two stories, with accommodation for more than 10 soldiers on the lower level.
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In the desert, the wall is made of pressed earth.
Some of the oldest parts still standing, in Gansu province, are made of rammed earth from the Western Han period, about 2,000 years ago.
UNESCO cites rammed-earth fortifications of the Western Han, conserved in Gansu, as evidence of the wall's long history alongside the Ming masonry.
Words to know
- fortification
- a wall, fort or tower built to defend a place
- rammed earth
- soil pounded hard between wooden boards to make a solid wall
- watchtower
- a tall tower where guards look out over the land
- pass
- a fort with a gate at a key point where people could cross the wall
- beacon
- a fire lit on a high place to send a signal
- dynasty
- a family of rulers who rule one after another for a long time
Discovery challenge
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Which country is the Great Wall in?
In which country is the Great Wall?
Across which country's northern border was the Great Wall built?
- Egypt
- China
- Peru
Show the answer
China
China! The wall goes across the north of China.
The Great Wall runs across northern China, from the coast in the east to Gansu province in the west.
UNESCO describes the wall as built on China's northern border, from Shanhaiguan in Hebei to Jiayuguan in Gansu.
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Which rulers built the wall we see today?
During which dynasty was most of today's Great Wall built?
Which dynasty built the best-preserved line of the wall, about 8,850 km long?
- The Ming
- The Romans
- The Inca
Show the answer
The Ming
The Ming rulers built the strong wall we see today.
The Ming dynasty ruled from 1368 to 1644 and built most of the wall that stands today.
The Ming line (1368 to 1644) is the best preserved; most of it dates from the Hongzhi reign (1487 to 1505).
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How did guards send a message at night?
How did signal towers send messages at night?
What did signal towers use to pass messages after dark?
- With a phone
- With fires or lanterns
- With a radio
Show the answer
With fires or lanterns
They lit fires or lanterns on top of the towers.
At night, guards lit fires or lanterns. In the daytime they made smoke instead.
Beacon fires or lanterns served at night and smoke by day; banners, clappers and guns were also used.
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What did builders press down hard to make walls in the desert?
In the western deserts, what were many parts of the wall made of?
Which building method was common for the wall in China's western deserts?
- Ice
- Glass
- Rammed earth
Show the answer
Rammed earth
Earth! They pressed it down hard between boards.
Builders pounded earth hard between wooden boards to make rammed-earth walls, or used mud bricks.
Western walls were often simple rammed earth and adobe; stone facing was used on many eastern ramparts such as Badaling.
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Who built the wall for the first emperor?
Who did the work of joining the walls for Qin Shi Huang?
According to Britannica, who labored on the Qin linking project begun about 214 BCE?
- Robots
- Soldiers and workers
- Only one family
Show the answer
Soldiers and workers
Lots and lots of soldiers and workers built it.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and workers who were made to work joined the walls together.
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and conscripted workers labored on the project, which lasted about a decade.
Nearby places
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City
Beijing
Beijing, the capital of China, has been the country's capital for most of the last 600 years. At its heart is the Forbidden City, the emperors' palace. About 21.8 million people lived in the Beijing municipality at the end of 2024.
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Landmark
Forbidden City
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Landmark
Terracotta Army
In 1974, farmers digging a well near Xi'an, China, found pieces of clay soldiers. Archaeologists uncovered an army of about 8,000 life-size soldiers and horses, made for the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a united China, who died in 210 BCE. The figures were once brightly painted, and each has its own face.
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City
Seoul
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City
Shanghai
Shanghai is China's most populous city, on the coast where the great Yangtze River meets the East China Sea. Once a small fishing village, it grew into one of the world's busiest seaports. About 24.9 million people lived in Shanghai in 2020, and the towers of Pudong rise across the Huangpu River.
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Natural wonder
Gobi Desert
The Gobi is a giant desert stretching across Mongolia and China. Britannica says its name comes from a Mongolian word meaning waterless place. Much of it is bare rock and gravel rather than sand, winters are bitterly cold and summers hot, and its rocks hold remarkable dinosaur fossils, including the first dinosaur eggs known to science.
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Landmark
Three Gorges Dam
The Three Gorges Dam crosses the Yangtze River in central China. It is 2,335 meters long and 185 meters high, and it can make more electricity than any other hydroelectric dam in the world. It also lets big ships travel far up the river, but building it meant that more than a million people had to move.
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Natural wonder
Lake Baikal
Lake Baikal, in southern Siberia, Russia, fills a deep crack in the Earth's crust where the land is pulling apart. UNESCO calls it the oldest and deepest lake in the world, about 25 million years old, and it holds about a fifth of the world's unfrozen fresh water. Many of its animals, like the Baikal seal, live nowhere else.
Experiments to try
Explore next
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Country
China
China is the largest country in Asia, almost as big as all of Europe. The land steps down from the high, cold Plateau of Tibet in the west to plains and coasts in the east, and about 1.4 billion people live there, along with giant pandas in the mountains of south-central China.
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Watch
City
Beijing
Beijing, the capital of China, has been the country's capital for most of the last 600 years. At its heart is the Forbidden City, the emperors' palace. About 21.8 million people lived in the Beijing municipality at the end of 2024.
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Journey
The Silk Road
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Landmark
Forbidden City
The Forbidden City in Beijing was built between 1406 and 1420 as the palace of China's emperors. Over about 500 years, 24 emperors came to the throne there. High walls and a wide moat surround it. Since 1925 it has been the Palace Museum, and it became a World Heritage Site in 1987.
- Watch Geography What is a World Heritage Site? World Heritage Sites are places so important that they belong, in a way, to everyone. Under a 1972 agreement, countries nominate their most outstanding places, experts check them, and a UNESCO committee decides. By 2026 the list held 1,273 sites: cultural places like the Taj Mahal, natural places like the Galápagos, and mixed ones like Machu Picchu.
- Watch Try it What If? Lab What if buildings had different foundations? A building's whole weight presses down through its foundation onto the ground. A wide foundation spreads that weight out, like snowshoes on snow. In our model, a 200-tonne building on sand is safe on a 40-square-meter footing. Shrink the footing to 8 square meters and it presses five times harder, more than the sand can take, so the building would sink and could crack or tilt.
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Watch
Landmark
Terracotta Army
In 1974, farmers digging a well near Xi'an, China, found pieces of clay soldiers. Archaeologists uncovered an army of about 8,000 life-size soldiers and horses, made for the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a united China, who died in 210 BCE. The figures were once brightly painted, and each has its own face.
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Landmark
Agra Fort
Agra Fort is a huge red sandstone fortress beside the Yamuna River in Agra, India. The Mughal emperor Akbar began it in 1565. Its walls, about 2.5 kilometers around, protect palaces, halls and mosques added by later emperors. It was both an army base and a royal home.
For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Locate the Great Wall across northern China and explain that it is many walls built over about 2,000 years.
- Describe who built the wall and how builders used local materials such as rammed earth, brick and stone.
- Name the parts of the wall (walkway, watchtowers, passes, signal towers) and what each was for.
- Discuss how a famous old place can be protected while many people visit it.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might builders use earth in one place and stone in another?
- How did people send messages quickly before phones? What other ways can you think of?
- Thousands of people visit Badaling every day. How can visitors help look after an old place?
Try at home or in class
- Make rammed earth: press damp sand or soil firmly into a small box or yogurt pot in thin layers, then turn it out and see how well it holds together.
- Play signal towers: stand in a line across a yard and pass a simple signal (a raised hand or a flashlight blink) from person to person, and time how fast it travels.
Key vocabulary: fortification, rammed earth, watchtower, pass, beacon, dynasty
Where these facts come from
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- UNESCO World Heritage List , UNESCO World Heritage Centre (Linked as a reference; site facts come from Wikidata)
- The Great Wall , UNESCO World Heritage Centre
- Great Wall of China , Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Great Wall of China: The Ming dynasty to the present , Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file (public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA); see each media record)
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 24, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.