Terracotta Army (Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang)

The Museum of the Terracotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang stands in Lintong District east of Xi'an, built directly over the pits where local farmers digging a well in 1974 struck buried clay figures. The find turned out to be the funerary guard of Qin Shi Huang (r. 221-210 BCE), the first emperor of a unified China, whose tomb mound lies about 1.5 km away and remains unexcavated. Three pits are open to visitors. Pit 1, covered by a hangar-like structure roughly 230 meters long, holds the bulk of the roughly 6,000 soldiers and horses arranged in battle formation, most still being pieced back together from shattered fragments. Pit 2 contains cavalry, chariot, and kneeling archer units and includes a small display of individually cased figures viewable at close range, including the famous kneeling archer with visible tread patterns on his boot soles. Pit 3, the smallest, is interpreted as a command headquarters. Each figure was assembled from mass-produced torso, arm, and leg parts, then finished with individualized heads, hairstyles, and facial features, and originally painted in bright pigments that oxidized within minutes of exposure to air, a conservation challenge the site's laboratories still study. A separate exhibition hall displays two half-scale bronze chariots recovered near the tomb mound, along with bronze weapons that retain a chromium-based anti-rust treatment. The museum, opened in 1979 and expanded since, presents the finds largely in situ rather than removed to display cases, and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Excavation continues in sections of Pit 1 and Pit 2, and visitors can often see archaeologists at work behind low barriers.