For the town in the Guangdong province of China, see Chang'an Town

Chang'an () is the ancient capital of more than 10 dynasties in China. "Chang'an" means "Perpetual Peace" in Classical Chinese.

The site of Chang'an of the Han Dynasty was located in northwest of present-day Xi'an, Shaanxi. Another site, Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty, includes the area inside the walls of Xi'an , small parts of eastern, western and major part of southern suburbs of modern Xi'an city. It is 8 times as big as the Xi'an city in the Ming Dynasty, which was reconstructed on the basis of the imperial city of the Sui and Tang Dynasty. Chang'an was one of the largest and the most populous cities in the world.

The city site was located 5 km away from Xi'an in the northwest. As the capital of the Western Han Dynasty, it was the centre of China's politics, economy and culture, the start of the Silk Road and an international metropolis which was comparable with the city of Rome at that time.

The construction of the city can be divided into 3 periods over more than 90 years. The Emperor Gao of Han Liu Bang decided to build the palaces before the city walls. In 202 BC, he repaired the Xingle Palace (兴乐宫) of the Qin Dynasty and renamed it to Changle Palace (长乐宫). Two years later, a new palace called Weiyang (未央宫) was constructed. In 195 BC, his son, Emperor Hui of Han begun the construction of the walls of Chang'an and finished them in September of 191 BC. Emperor Hui, Emperor Wu of Han then built several palaces in the city. At that time, Zhang Qian went to the west as a diplomat of the Empire of Han. Chang'an city became a bridge between Asia and Europe as the eastern start of the famous Silk Road. In 2 AD, more than 240,000 people lived in Chang'an. After the Western Han, the Eastern Han government made Luoyang the capital and renamed Chang'anto Xijing (western capital) (China had, for cosmological reasons, always four "capitals"). After the Eastern Han, many dynasties regarded Chang'an city as the capital. In 582, emperor of the Sui Dyansty selected a place in the southeast of it to build a new capital which he called Daxing city (renamed as Chang'an in the Tang Dynasty). The Chang'an city of Han was abandoned.

See also

• Historical capital of China
• Xi Ming Temple

External links

• Introduction of Xi'an/Chang'an by the University of Washington