Jul 10 2009

The Terracotta Army

Category: Martin @ 08:04

About 40 km from Xi'an is the excavation site of the Terracotta Army. Each year 6 million people visit the largest on-site museum of China. The museum contains three large buildings (the main one above is 230m long) where the excavations are shown. Archeologists are on site and constantly discover new clay figures, reassemble them and put them on display (There are an estimated 6000 soldiers buried underground). The museum is part of the much larger mausoleum for Qin Sihuang the first emperor of China. The Terracotta Army was only discovered 1974 by a farmer who was digging for water. Now in his 70ies the farmer himself was in one of the adjacent buildings and signed my copy of a book about the site.

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