The Ming Tombs occupy a sheltered basin in the hills about fifty kilometres north-west of central Beijing, where thirteen emperors of the Ming dynasty were buried between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The approach to the whole complex is a single ceremonial road, the Sacred Way, which runs from a surviving stone archway south of the valley through a sequence of gates to the point where the tombs fan out. It was designed to be walked slowly, and it still works that way.
The stone figures
The centrepiece is a stretch of several hundred metres lined on both sides with paired statues, carved in the 1430s from single blocks of stone. There are animals first - lions, camels, elephants, horses and two mythical beasts, one kneeling and one standing - and then a second group of human figures: military officials, civilian officials and meritorious ministers, each pair standing in the same posture for six centuries. The scale is deliberately oversized, and because the figures face each other across a dirt-and-paving path with trees behind them, the effect is closer to an outdoor sculpture park than to a tomb.
How to walk it
The road begins at the stone memorial archway, passes under a three-arch gate and continues to the Dragon and Phoenix Gate, which is where the statues stand. Beyond that it reaches a second gate at the head of the valley, and from there a road turns off to Changling, the largest and best-preserved of the tombs, with its great wooden Hall of Eminent Favours. The whole Sacred Way section is about 1.5 kilometres on level ground, and you can walk it in either direction or take the site's internal shuttle if you have limited time.
Practical notes
The site is about an hour and a half from central Beijing by road and is normally combined with a Great Wall visit on the same day, since both lie in the same direction. Tickets are separate for the Sacred Way, Changling and Dingling, the excavated tomb whose underground palace can be entered. The valley is open and hot in summer with little shade, and cold and windy in winter. Weekday mornings in spring and autumn are the quietest, and the light on the stone figures is best in the two hours after opening.
