Xi'an

Xi'an buried an army and dug up the ancient world's greatest audience. The Terracotta Warriors — thousands of individually faced soldiers guarding the First Emperor since 210 BC — are the city's global signature, but they are only the garrison of a larger fact: as Chang'an, this was the capital of thirteen dynasties and, under the Tang, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road and perhaps the most cosmopolitan city on earth, where Sogdian merchants, Persian musicians and Japanese students crowded a chessboard of avenues. The Big Wild Goose Pagoda still stands where the monk Xuanzang translated the scriptures he carried back from India; the Ming city wall runs its complete fourteen-kilometre rectangle, bicycle-ready; the Muslim Quarter's lanes feed the descendants of those Silk Road settlers and everyone else besides.

The Tang capital was also music's capital — the court orchestras of Chang'an set the sound of East Asia, and Xi'an guyue, the drums-and-winds music descended from that era, is inscribed by UNESCO as intangible heritage. The modern city honours the lineage in both directions: the Xi'an Symphony Orchestra has become famous for carrying the classics to the monuments — concerts before the Terracotta Army watched online by millions — and plays its seasons at the Xi'an Grand Theatre in the pagoda's district; orchestra and theatre are both documented in the concert record. Warriors below, walls around, music between: Xi'an is China's memory palace, fully staffed.