Daming Palace

The Daming Palace (大明宮, “Palace of Great Brightness”) was the principal imperial palace of the Tang dynasty (618–907) for most of the dynasty’s history. It stood on the Longshou Plateau, a slight rise just outside the north-eastern corner of the walled capital Chang’an, the city known today as Xi’an in Shaanxi Province. From this raised ground the emperor’s halls looked down over the grid of the city.

It was not a single building but a walled precinct containing dozens of halls, gates, offices, residences, gardens and a large artificial lake. By 1960 archaeologists had already located more than thirty hall and pavilion sites. Along the main axis, Hanyuan, Xuanzheng and Zichen halls formed the outer, middle and inner courts respectively. These three were audience and government spaces; the residential quarters of the emperor’s household lay further north, around the lake.

Of the three principal palace complexes of Tang Chang’an — the Taiji Palace, the Daming Palace and the Xingqing Palace — the Daming Palace was the largest, and its halls were among the grandest buildings of the city.

The palace was the centre of Tang government for more than two centuries. Emperors received foreign envoys here, held New Year audiences, announced reforms, and in some cases were enthroned or overthrown here. It suffered destructive fires in the wars of the late ninth century, and in 904, three years before the Tang dynasty itself ended, the buildings of Chang’an were dismantled.

The story begins with a family matter. In 634, the eighth year of the Zhenguan reign, Emperor Taizong ordered a palace to be built for his father, the retired founding emperor Gaozu (Li Yuan). The older imperial residence, the Taiji Palace, lay in the low, damp northern part of the city, and the new site on higher ground promised cooler, drier air in summer. The palace was first called Yong’an Palace, “Palace of Eternal Peace”, and was renamed Daming Palace the next year. Gaozu died in 635 without ever moving in, the palace was not finished, and construction soon stopped.

The decisive phase came under Taizong’s son, Emperor Gaozong. According to the New Book of Tang, Gaozong suffered from an illness called fengbi (風痺, a “wind” ailment of the joints) and disliked the damp of the old palace, so in 662 he began large-scale building on the site. The great halls Hanyuan and Xuanzheng were completed, and in 663 the court moved in. The complex was renamed Penglai Palace, after a mythical island of immortals, and in 670 Hanyuan Palace; the name Daming was restored in 701 according to the New Book of Tang (some reference works give 705).

From then until the end of the ninth century, the Daming Palace was the main stage of Tang politics. It saw the strong rule of Empress Wu Zetian (who, however, spent much of her reign in Luoyang), the brilliant early court of Emperor Xuanzong, and later the growing power of palace eunuchs, who controlled the inner guard and sometimes decided who would become emperor.

The palace is easiest to understand by following its main north–south axis, along which the ceremonial halls were arranged. At the south stood Danfeng Gate, the principal gate. Excavations in 2005 showed that it had five doorways.

Danfeng Gate and Hanyuan Hall were about 610 metres apart along the central axis; the imperial road between them was reserved for the emperor. A separate excavated brick-paved path is thought to have been used by officials attending court. The open space in front of the hall was some 770 metres wide. The hall stood on a raised rammed-earth platform more than ten metres above the square in front of it. Those admitted climbed long sloping ramps, the so-called “dragon-tail way”, to reach it, so the building seemed to float above the crowd. Two tall towers, Xiangluan and Qifeng, stood forward on either side like outstretched arms, linked to the hall by corridors. This was the outer court, used for New Year audiences, great amnesties and the reception of foreign embassies.

Further north came Xuanzheng Hall, the middle court, where the emperor held regular audiences with officials, and then Zichen Hall, the inner court, where he met a smaller circle of ministers. Each step northward was a step into a more private, more restricted world. Government offices, including the Secretariat and Chancellery, were placed beside Xuanzheng Hall.

North of the halls of state, the ground drops to Taiye Pool, a large lake with an island called Penglai Mountain, again named after the island of immortals. Around the lake stood pavilions, galleries and religious buildings, including a Daoist hall called Sanqing Hall. On the western side, Linde Hall, a huge complex of joined halls, was used for banquets for officials and foreign guests.

The Daming Palace cannot be understood apart from Chang’an. The Sui and Tang capital was one of the largest planned cities in the world: a walled rectangle of about 8.6 by 9.7 kilometres, laid out on a strict grid of broad avenues and walled residential wards. Around 750, estimates place the population within the walls at up to a million, with more people living in the suburbs. Two great markets, the East Market and the West Market, handled trade; the West Market in particular was home to merchants from Central Asia and Iran.

In the original plan the imperial palace (Taiji Palace) sat in the middle of the northern edge, with the government offices of the Imperial City immediately south of it, so that the ruler faced south over the city like the Pole Star over the heavens. Building the Daming Palace outside the north-eastern corner shifted the political centre of gravity. Officials now lived and worked in the eastern part of the city, and the eastern wards became more fashionable. Emperor Xuanzong added a third palace, the Xingqing Palace, near the eastern wall.

Chang’an was cosmopolitan. Sogdian traders, Persian refugees, Buddhist monks from India and Korea, students from Silla and Japan, and envoys from Tibet and the Turkic peoples all passed through. Several religions had places of worship in the city, including Buddhist monasteries, Daoist temples, and temples of Zoroastrians, Manichaeans and the Church of the East. Only some of these visitors ever entered the palace: foreign envoys attended ceremonies at court, while merchants, monks and students mostly lived out their lives in the city’s wards.

Tang government was built on ritual. Regular court audiences, the New Year reception, the announcement of new reign names and the proclamation of amnesties were staged in the halls of the Daming Palace, and the architecture was designed for these occasions. The height of Hanyuan Hall and the long approach across the square were meant to display the emperor’s position at the centre of the world order.

The palace also housed working institutions. Scholars of the Hanlin Academy, whose remains were partly excavated in 1983, drafted edicts and served the emperor as literary advisers. The poet Li Bai was briefly attached to Emperor Xuanzong’s court in the early 740s, though the sources do not tell us in which buildings he worked. Many Tang poems describe dawn audiences in the palace, the sound of bells and the smell of incense in the halls.

In the later Tang period, after the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), power inside the palace shifted. Eunuchs commanded the Palace Army (Shence Army) and controlled access to the emperor. Several emperors were placed on the throne, and at least one was murdered, through palace intrigue. In 835 an attempt by officials to destroy eunuch power, known as the Sweet Dew Incident, ended in a massacre of officials within the palace grounds. The splendid architecture thus also witnessed the weakening of imperial authority.

For the Tang court, receiving envoys confirmed the emperor’s claim to universal rule; for the visitors, missions brought trade, titles, books and recognition. The Daming Palace was the main stage for these ceremonies. The Japanese chronicle Shoku Nihongi, for example, records that at the New Year audience of 753 in Hanyuan Hall the envoys were ranged on two sides, with Silla, Japan, Tibet and the Abbasid caliphate (“Dashi”) among them.

Japan sent official embassies to Tang China from 630 until the last one sailed in 838, some sixteen voyages in all; a further mission planned in 894 was never carried out. From the eighth century the embassies sailed in four ships carrying 500 to 600 people. Students and monks who travelled with them, such as Kibi no Makibi and later Kūkai and Saichō, brought learning and Buddhist traditions back to Japan. Abe no Nakamaro followed a different path: he served as a Tang official and never returned home. The voyages were dangerous, and some travellers died at sea or remained abroad.

A well-known episode from 753 illustrates the rivalry among visitors. According to the report that the Japanese deputy envoy Ōtomo no Komaro made on his return in 754, recorded in the Shoku Nihongi, Japan had been placed second on the west side, below Tibet, while Silla stood first on the east side. Komaro protested that Silla had long paid tribute to Japan, and the Tang general Wu Huaishi switched the two envoys’ places. The story is famous in Japan, but it is recorded only on the Japanese side, and historians treat its details with caution.

Silla sent envoys and students in large numbers, especially after the Silla–Tang War of 670–676 had ended and relations were repaired in the eighth century. Some Silla students passed the Tang jinshi examination as foreign candidates (bingong); the most famous, Choe Chiwon, who had gone to Tang in 868, passed in 874 and served in China before returning to Silla.

The years when the Daming Palace was built and filled with life were a time of dramatic change across Eurasia. In 634, when Taizong ordered the first buildings, Muslim Arab armies were beginning their campaigns beyond Arabia after the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632. Within twenty years the Sasanian Persian Empire had fallen. Its last king’s son, Peroz III, fled east and was given the title “King of Persia” by the Tang court in 662, the same year Gaozong began rebuilding the Daming Palace. A statue of Peroz is among the stone figures of foreign dignitaries at the tomb of Gaozong and Wu Zetian. Through him the palace is linked to the world of Khosrow I and the Sasanian kings.

On the Korean Peninsula, Tang and Silla allied to destroy Baekje (660) and Goguryeo (668). Baekje fell before Gaozong moved into the Daming Palace in 663; Goguryeo fell in 668, and the Silla–Tang War followed in 670–676. In Japan, the Taika Reform of 645 began a long effort to build a Chinese-style state with written law codes, and Japanese capitals such as Heijō-kyō (Nara, from 710) copied Chang’an’s grid plan and the idea of a great audience hall facing south over a broad courtyard.

Further west, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, inaugurated in 537, was already about a century old when work on the Daming Palace began in 634. In 751 Tang and Abbasid forces met at the Battle of Talas in Central Asia, and in 762 the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur founded Baghdad as a round city, a rival capital of learning and trade on the other side of the Silk Roads. In 800 Charlemagne was crowned emperor in Rome. Chang’an, Baghdad and Constantinople were major imperial capitals of eighth-century Eurasia.

Chang’an suffered repeatedly in the late Tang wars. Rebel forces under An Lushan occupied the city in 756, a Tibetan army briefly held it in 763, and the rebel Huang Chao captured and sacked it in 881. After each of the earlier disasters the palace was repaired. Excavations show that it was finally destroyed by fire; a 2017 study by archaeologists of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggests, on the basis of the Old Book of Tang, that this may have been the burning of 896 during an attack by the warlord Li Maozhen, after which the emperors appear to have lived mainly in the old Taiji Palace and the Daming Palace was perhaps never repaired.

The final blow to the city came in 904. The warlord Zhu Wen, who controlled the last Tang emperors, forced Emperor Zhaozong to move the capital east to Luoyang and ordered the buildings of Chang’an torn down, their timber floated down the rivers to be reused. Whatever still stood of the Daming Palace ended with the city. Three years later, in 907, Zhu Wen deposed the last Tang emperor and founded his own Later Liang dynasty.

After that the site was never rebuilt as a palace. For more than a thousand years its earthen platforms stood in fields. In the twentieth century, as Xi’an grew, the area north of the Longhai Railway became crowded with refugees and railway workers, and a dense neighbourhood of makeshift housing covered much of the ruins.

Systematic archaeological investigation began in March 1957 under the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which became part of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1977. In 1957–1959 the team mapped the palace walls, gates, halls and water channels and excavated several gates and Linde Hall. Later campaigns excavated Qingsi Hall (1980–1981), Sanqing Hall (1981–1982), parts of the Hanlin Academy (1983), the Hanyuan Hall complex (1995–1996), the Taiye Pool (2000–2005, with the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties), Danfeng Gate (2005) and Xing’an Gate (2009).

Conservation began in 1984 with work on Linde Hall. In the early 1990s UNESCO, the Japanese government and the Chinese government agreed to protect the site of Hanyuan Hall, using funds from a Japanese trust fund at UNESCO and from the city of Xi’an. After the full excavation of 1995–1996, the conservation project ran from May 1998 to March 2003. Under a further Japanese-funded agreement of 2002, an exhibition hall and a protective building over an ancient brick kiln were added.

In the following years Xi’an turned the whole palace area into a heritage park. Wang Ziqi reports that a clearance and environmental-improvement project decided in 2005 involved about 3.5 square kilometres, some 25,000 households and about 100,000 people. Jianli Yu and Luca Zan describe how, from 2007, about 3.2 square kilometres of land were acquired and some 100,000 residents relocated within months. The Daming Palace National Heritage Park opened in October 2010, with a museum, landscaped outlines of the halls and a large new structure over the excavated Danfeng Gate. In 2014 the site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as part of the transnational Silk Roads property.

Because no building of the Daming Palace survives above ground, everything we know about its appearance comes from three kinds of evidence: excavated foundations, tiles and building components; written sources such as the Old and New Books of Tang, later topographical works on Chang’an, and poetry; and comparison with surviving buildings of the Tang period and with Japanese palaces modelled on Tang forms. Each has limits. Texts describe ceremonies and names more often than structures, and poems exaggerate. Foundations show plans but not heights or roof forms.

Reconstructions of Hanyuan Hall are therefore interpretations. The architectural historian Fu Xinian published reconstruction proposals in 1973 and 1998, Yang Hongxun and others proposed different versions, and the excavator An Jiayao re-examined the hall’s history after the 1995–1996 excavation. The proposals differ on the roof, the walls, the flanking towers and the form of the ramps; Hsueh Meng-Chi (2011) compares them as a case study in method. Reconstruction drawings shown in books and museums should be read as scholarly hypotheses, not as photographs of the past.

A second debate concerns chronology. The historical texts give the dates 634, 662–663 and 904, but the palace was repaired and altered many times in between, and excavated remains can belong to different building phases. At Xing’an Gate, for example, archaeologists found an earlier north-facing gate of the city wall beneath a later south-facing palace gate, and Fu Xinian has suggested that Hanyuan Hall itself may have been substantially rebuilt around 803. The surviving layout therefore cannot be assigned wholesale to a single construction date.

A third question concerns influence. Japanese archaeologists consider that the layout of the First Imperial Audience Hall of Heijō Palace, with a great hall on a raised platform facing a broad courtyard, imitated Hanyuan Hall. How direct that borrowing was, and whether Japanese builders knew the Daming Palace itself or older Chinese models, remains a matter for comparative study.

The heritage park has been widely praised as a way of protecting a large earthen site inside a modern city: it removed crowded and unsafe housing from the ruins and gave them a clear, readable presence. It has also been criticised. Wang Ziqi reports that Xu Pingfang, a former director of the Institute of Archaeology, warned that covering unexcavated remains with cement and concrete and building an underground museum would make future excavation difficult, and that the archaeologist Xie Chensheng, while supporting heritage parks and the removal of buildings, opposed running heritage as an enterprise for financial gain. Jianli Yu and Luca Zan add that the project was financed largely by bank loans repaid through land development around the park, and that the share of the budget spent on conservation shrank as the project grew.

Different sources illuminate different sides of the palace’s history. Chinese texts and excavations show it as the stage of Tang government; Japanese records preserve the embassies and episodes such as the 753 seating dispute; Korean sources show Silla’s changing relations with Tang, from wartime alliance to the war of the 670s, and the careers of Silla scholars such as Choe Chiwon who studied and served in China.

Diplomatic records also express the interests of their authors. Chinese records describe foreign envoys as bringing tribute to a superior ruler, while Ōtomo no Komaro’s report presents Japan’s own claim to precedence over Silla; neither should be treated as an impartial description of the relationships involved. Reading the palace as a stage of diplomacy means comparing these voices.