Gonnei City Site (国内城遗址)

Gonnei City, known in Chinese as Guoneicheng, was the plains capital of the Goguryeo kingdom for roughly four centuries, from the early 3rd century AD until the court moved to Pyongyang in 427 AD. It sits on the north bank of the Yalu River in the middle of modern Ji'an in Jilin province, directly across the water from North Korea. Together with the mountain fortress of Wandu and the tombs scattered around Ji'an, it forms part of the UNESCO World Heritage property Capital Cities and Tombs of the Ancient Koguryo Kingdom, inscribed in 2004. The city was built as a rectangular enclosure with stone-faced walls that once ran for about 2.7 kilometres, with gates, corner towers and projecting bastions. Much of the interior was later covered by the modern town, so the surviving remains are fragments rather than a continuous circuit. The best-preserved stretches are the stone wall sections along Jiangbian Street and nearby lanes, where large cut granite blocks are laid in regular courses and in places stand several metres high. Archaeologists have also identified gate foundations, a palace area and a drainage pond within the former city. Gonnei City worked as a pair with Wandu Mountain City: the lowland city housed the court and population in peacetime, while the hill fortress served as a refuge under attack. The site has no formal museum interpretation on the wall itself, so visitors generally read signboards and combine the visit with the Ji'an Museum, which holds artefacts recovered from the city and its tombs. Conservation work in recent decades has stabilised and capped the exposed masonry while the town has grown around it. The wall fragments are open-air, free to view and can be seen in about an hour on foot, making the site an easy first stop before the tombs and the Hotaiwang Stele on the edge of town.