Work is ongoing in China on a major project to restore Daming Palace – the 1,100 year-old ruling centre of the Tang Dynasty in modern Xi’an (formerly the Tang capital, Chang’an) – and around it build an expansive National Relics Park. The project was officially launched in October of last year, and is hoped to be completed by October 2010.
Daming Palace was established in 634 AD, in the eight year of the reign of Emperor Taizong. It was the largest of three major palaces in Chang’an, and the political hub of the empire for 240 years, until the Tang moved their capital to Luoyang in Henan Province in 904. Its architecture was hugely influential on many other major public buildings constructed in its wake, and Daming Palace remains one of the largest and finest examples of the Tang style. Its grounds cover 3.2 square kilometres, and feature various terraces, halls, temples, pavilions and administrative buildings, all of which will be incorporated into the Relics Park.
The Daming Palace Heritage Site Preservation Revelation Project is a key scheme among 100 others outlined under China’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan. It’s intended to be a model of large-scale heritage site restoration, and with it demonstrate how such an endeavour can help drive wider city development.
“The project is a perfect integration between [the] preservation of ancient cultural heritage and [the] construction of ecological landscape,” states the DMGYZ website. It’s hoped to be a “masterpiece,” that makes the most of the building’s aesthetic features, while also fulfilling more utilitarian goals such as “accommodating citizens’ needs of recreation, residence and environment, and mirroring the international standards for improving the humanistic ambience and building up [of] new urban districts.”
The long-term goal is for Daming Palace to be listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Additionally, since Xi’an is the starting point of the celebrated Silk Road – the 2,000-year-old trade route linking Asia and Europe – it’s also hoped that the project will aid the drive by China and other East Asian countries to get numerous major landmarks on the Silk Road’s path added to the UNESCO list. Currently, several sites along the road have been nominated by the Chinese government for inclusion, although the ancient city of Kashgar remains conspicuously absent from the list.