In the Tang dynasty, Xi'an was laid out with two official markets inside the city walls. The Western Market was the one reserved for foreign trade, and merchants from Persia, Sogdiana, India, Korea and Japan traded silk, ceramics, spices, horses and precious metals there. The Tang West Market Museum was built on the excavated remains of that market, in the west of the modern city.
What you see
The museum is built directly over the excavation, and the best part of the visit is walking above the original street surface and the remains of shops, wells and drainage channels, protected under glass and explained panel by panel. Above this archaeological layer, the galleries display Tang ceramics, bronze mirrors, coins from along the Silk Road, glassware, gold and silver work, and figurines of Central Asian traders and musicians.
Why it matters
Most museum collections in Xi'an show the Tang court. This one shows Tang commerce and the foreign communities that lived in the city, including Sogdian merchants who settled here and are buried in tombs around Xi'an, and the Persian and Central Asian objects that arrived along the trade routes. It makes the Silk Road concrete instead of abstract.
Practical information
The museum is in the Laodong Road area, west of the Bell Tower, and is easy to reach by taxi or by Metro Line 1 to Laodong Road. It opens daily except Mondays, generally from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with last entry in the late afternoon. Ticketing varies between free and paid depending on the exhibition programme, and the museum also runs a separate underground exhibition hall on the Silk Road that charges an additional fee. Allow about ninety minutes.
Combining it
Daming Palace and the Tang West Market tell the political and commercial halves of the Tang story, and they sit on the same metro and taxi routes. A half day covering both, with a stop at a noodle shop in between, is one of the better half days in Xi'an and almost entirely without crowds.
