The day
Forty minutes north of the city, the Han emperor Jingdi lies surrounded by an afterlife army utterly unlike the First Emperor’s — thousands of serene, third-scale figures with gentle smiles, buried with wooden arms and silk robes that time has stripped away. You view them through glass: walkways run directly over the excavated pits, and on quiet days you’ll have the underground halls nearly to yourself.
The rest of the day stays off the checklist: the tilted, earthquake-cracked Small Wild Goose Pagoda in its garden, the brush-and-ink shops of Shuyuanmen calligraphy street under the city wall, and Yongxingfang’s Shaanxi food court, where drinking rice wine from a bowl and smashing it is not vandalism but tradition.
Good to know
Hour by hour
North across the Wei River to the Han imperial tombs.
Glass floors over the burial pits: ranks of small, smiling figures, animals and granary models in the half-dark.
The tomb mounds of emperor and empress rising from the fields — quiet, wide-open Han landscape.
Guantang baozi soup buns and Shaanxi cold noodles at a local favourite back in town.
The graceful, slightly crooked Tang pagoda that survived 70 earthquakes — and the free Xi’an Museum beside it.
Brush shops, ink stones, paper-cutting and seal carvers in the shadow of the city wall.
A courtyard food quarter of Shaanxi specialities — finish with the famous bowl-smashing rice wine.
A short hop across the old city.
Xi’an’s quieter masterpieces, collected.
This is a private trip — every timing above flexes to your pace, your appetite and your energy.
The fine print
Keep exploring
Tell us your date and hotel — we confirm your driver within hours. Free cancellation up to 24 hours before pickup.