Koguryo Capital Cities and Tombs (Ji'an)

UNESCO World Heritage Site, Capital Cities And Tombs Of The Ancient Koguryo Kingdom, Inscribed 2004 · Ji'an, Jilin

On the Chinese bank of the Yalu, at Ji'an, stand the walls and the graveyards of a kingdom that ruled this country and much of the Korean peninsula for seven hundred years. Koguryo left two cities here - a walled river capital and a mountain fortress above it - and around forty surviving royal and noble tombs, the grandest of them a stepped pyramid of cut granite thirteen metres high that locals have always called the General's Tomb. Beside it stands a stele of rough stone six and a half metres tall, raised in 414 for the king known as Gwanggaeto the Great and carrying some seventeen hundred characters of his campaigns: the single most important written source for the period, and the object over which Chinese, Korean and Japanese scholars have argued for more than a century. The finest tombs are painted inside with wrestlers, dancers, hunters and four guardian beasts. Almost all of them are sealed to protect the pigment, and you will see the outsides.

Ji'an, Tonghua, Ji'an, Jilin, China

Sites are generally open daily from around 8:00-17:30 in summer, with shorter hours and some closures from roughly November to April when snow and severe cold make the outdoor sites and the mountain fortress impractical. A through-ticket covers the main tombs, the stele and the city walls; the Ji'an Museum keeps its own hours. ALMOST ALL THE PAINTED TOMB INTERIORS ARE PERMANENTLY SEALED for conservation - the murals are seen as reproductions in the museum. THIS IS A BORDER PREFECTURE: obey photography restrictions near the Yalu.

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