Visiting the Terracotta Army in Xi’An in 2026 – The Historian Traveller

Last Updated on June 21, 2026 by Laura

The Terracotta Army is one of those archaeological discoveries that has always intrigued me. Maybe because in a world where we know everything with a simple click from our phones, many information about them are still surrounded by a hint of mystery. Visiting the Terracotta Army was one of the moment I was most looking forward of my trip to China: roughly 8,000 warriors, ranked in formation, standing guard underground for over two millennia. One of the most important discoveries in human history.

And yet the moment I walked into Pit 1 and looked out over that vast subterranean army stretching away into the half-darkness, something shifted. It wasn’t the size that got me, though the size is extraordinary. It was the faces. Every single warrior has a different one. Unique features, individual expressions, distinct hairstyles, each one a IS specific human being, rendered in clay and buried in the dark for over 2,200 years, waiting to be found. Their perfection is almost shocking to see.
This is not a site you visit for an hour and tick off a list. It deserves your time, your attention, and possibly, a decent guide. Here’s everything you need to know to make your visit a memorable one.

New to China Traveling? 🇨🇳 Maybe you want to read the below!

The Story Behind the Site

To understand the Terracotta Army, you need to understand the man who ordered it construction.

Qin Shi Huang unified China in 221 BC, ending centuries of warring states and establishing the Qin dynasty. He standardised weights, measures, currency, and writing across the empire, and began construction of the Great Wall. By any measure, he was one of the most consequential rulers in human history: a man who reshaped an entire civilisation. He was also, by the accounts of those who served him, utterly consumed by the fear of death.

Construction of his tomb began in 246 BC, when he was just thirteen years old and newly on the throne. It involved over 720,000 workers across nearly 40 years, completing in 206 BC. The First Emperor sought to conquer death itself, building himself a vast underground city guarded by a life-size terracotta army, complete with warriors, infantrymen, horses, chariots, and all their attendant armour and weaponry.

Emperor Qin Shi Huang passed away just four years after its completion, in 210 BC. His underground empire outlasted his dynasty, his successors, and eventually the civilisation that built it, preserved in the dark for more than two thousand years.

The Accidental Discovery

In 1974, workers digging a well outside Xi’an struck upon one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in human history: a life-size clay soldier poised for battle. The farmer who made the initial discovery was named Yang Zhifa. He reported it to local authorities. Archaeologists arrived. And the scale of what was laying beneath the fields of Shaanxi Province slowly, astonishingly, revealed itself.

As excavations progressed, archaeologists discovered Pit 2 and Pit 3 in April and May of 1976. Together, the three pits form a complete underground military formation simulating the Qin army. The site opened to the public in 1979, and was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Yang Zhifa spent decades working at the museum, signing books for visitors. If you see an elderly man doing exactly that near the exit, stop and say hello, you’re looking at the man who changed history.

Before You Go: The Essentials

• Full name: Museum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum
• Address: Qinling North Road, Lintong District, Xi’an — approx. 35–40km northeast of Xi’an city centre
• Peak season (March 16–November 15): 8:30am–6:30pm (last entry 5:30pm)
• Low season (November 16–March 15): 8:30am–6:00pm (last entry 5:00pm)
• Recommended time: Minimum 3 hours; half a day is ideal
• Didi Price from Xi’An: CNY 100–150 (£11–16)
• Private Car from Xi’An (half day): CNY 500/600

How to get to the Terracotta Army from Xi’An

The Terracotta Army museum is located at about 46/50 mins drive from central Xi’An. You can either go:

• By Didi: 45–60 minutes from Xi’an city centre, CNY 100–150 (£11–16) each way
• By public bus: Routes 306 or 914/915 from Xi’an Railway Station North Square, 60–75 minutes, a few kuai

To note that many people prefer to have a driver that wait for them at the exit and this the option we opted too. This works pretty well for families as you have someone that is ready for you and no need to scramble for a taxi alongside thousands of other people. We got pretty lucky as we met Chuo, our driver, the day before as he picked us from the airport. While chatting, he told us that he does also private driving so we agreed a price (100 CNY per hour was his rate) and he punctually picked-up us and took us back at the end of our visit. If you are in Xi’An and need a reliable driver, send me a DM on Instagram and I will be happy to give you Chuo’s contact.

As a suggestion (for any private driver’s trip), agree in advance the price you need to pay as you don’t want surprises at the end!

Tickets: What You Need to Know

The standard adult entrance fee is CNY 120 during off-peak season and CNY 150 during peak season. This covers all main exhibition halls : Pits 1, 2, and 3, plus the Exhibition Hall of Bronze Chariots and Horses.

The site sells a maximum of 65,000 tickets per day and limits capacity to 13,700 visitors at any one time. During peak season, April to October and Chinese public holidays, tickets can sell out days in advance.

NOTE: I discovered that the official website for tickets works only through WeChat and is mostly in Chinese. Not impossible to book, but a bit lengthier than expected. Trip.com has a slightly higher price but much more friendly for visitor.

Because a guide is advised, especially if you are visiting for the first time, is better to organise this per time. This Terracotta Army private tour provides English speaking guide and include a skip-the-line ticket.

Do I need a guided tour to visit the Terracotta Army?

I hired an English-speaking guide at the entrance, and my honest answer on whether to recommend it is: it depends.

If you’re someone who reads widely about history and feels confident navigating complex archaeological sites independently, the official English audio guide available at the entrance may be sufficient. The signage has improved significantly in recent years.

But if you want to understand what you’re looking at, the military logic of the formations, the manufacturing process that produced thousands of unique faces, the political story behind the man who built all of this, then a human guide transforms the experience. The difference between seeing thousands of clay soldiers and actually understanding why they’re arranged exactly that way, what rank those figures hold, what it would have taken logistically to produce this many individual warriors, that difference is considerable.

Our experience with a locally-hired guide at the Terracotta Army Museum

We decided to hire a guide locally. Indeed, the tourist office inside the Museum offer this service for foreign tourists. We got a lovely lady who immediately conquered the heart of our children. She was well spoken, with a very good English and excellent knowledge of the site. We agreed to a visit with her for about CNY 300. I have to say she was perfect almost until the end. She explained us a lot of things and helped us with the queue, showed us various details of the pits etc.

The tourist traps at the Terracotta Army Museum

However, once we finished Pit 3, she kinda changed behaviour and suddenly became very pushy for going towards jade shops, VR experience, themed photos and things (tourist traps) that we were absolutely not interested in spending extra money.

Of course, we bought (much more) than a few souvenirs at the bigger store inside the complex, but she started acting completely different after we refused to do the VR (which was an extra 160 CNY per person) and other extra tourist-traps experiences. Despite declining politely, she was super pushy and we felt like she was kind of offended by our decision. We ended our contract in good terms, but this last part of the day left us with a bitter sweet memory.

Overall, I believe that a guide with you enrich the experience of the museum as they know much more details and point out at things you wouldn’t notice otherwise. At the same time, I have contrasting feeling about the sudden change of our guide. Indeed, after the pits there is a quite big entertainment area where I saw many tourists with guides lured into these shops, VR experiences and other activities that seemed more like tourist traps. So, if you hire a guide, make sure to be extra clear on what you want and don’t want to visit. We were kinda caught by surprise about it because I didn’t know such area existed after the pits, but now you know so you can get better prepared!

Terracotta Army: The Key Facts

If you are not familiar with the Terracotta Army, here below are some facts that can be useful for your trip:

• Still being excavated: Yes. Parts of Pit 1 and the emperor’s tomb mound remain unearthed
• Date of construction: 246–206 BC. Roughly 40 years of continuous work
• Commissioned by: Qin Shi Huang, China’s first emperor (259–210 BC)
• Purpose: To guard the emperor in the afterlife
• Total warriors discovered to date: Over 8,000
• Chariots: 130, each originally made of wood (now mostly decayed, except the ones in the museum)
• Horses: 520 chariot horses and 150 cavalry horses
• Number of pits: 4: three containing warriors, one found empty (construction abandoned at the Qin Dynasty’s fall). There are other minor pits found within and outside the walls surrounding the tomb mound. These contained very different terracotta figures such as labourers and other known as “the acrobats”.
• Size of Pit 1: Approximately 230 metres long, 62 metres wide: the size of two football pitches
• Height of warriors: Varies by rank. Infantry average 1.8 metres, generals up to 2 metres
• Unique faces: Every single warrior has individually sculpted facial features, no two are identical but studies confirm there are 10 main faces prototypes that were modified to look different.
• Original colour: All warriors were painted in vivid pigments including the rare Han Purple; colour is lost within 4 minutes of air exposure.
• Workers involved: Over 720,000 across the construction period
• Depth underground: The pits sit approximately 5 metres below the surface
• Distance from Xi’an city centre: 35–40 kilometres northeast
• UNESCO World Heritage status: Awarded 1987

Navigating the Site: The Three Pits

The museum complex is larger than most people expect. Allow 10–15 minutes to walk from the entrance through the landscaped area before you reach the exhibition halls.

👉 There is a shuttle bus that can take you from the Entrance (soon after the checks) to the Entrance of Pit 1. This is one-way only and tickets cost 10 CNY per person (children are free). There is a QR code next to the bus stop that you can scan to buy the tickets. Make sure you have WeChat and Alipay enabled and connected to your credit cards on your phone.

Pit 1 — Start Here

Pit 1 is the one you’ve seen in photographs, and it earns every bit of its reputation. Rows upon rows of warriors ranked in battle formation, stretching back into the shadows of a vast hangar-like building: the full scale of what lies here only hits you when you’re standing in front of it. It’s the place that will make you say “WOW” once you step foot on it and it took me a good 5 minutes to realise that I was looking at one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Take your time. Walk the full length of the viewing platform. Look closely at the faces because no two of them are the same. Notice the details: the knot of a sandal strap, the pattern of armour scales, the careful rendering of a beard. These are not mass-produced props. They are individual portraits, crafted one by one with extraordinary care for an audience of exactly one. They were meant to protect the emperor Qin Shi Huang for eternity and still doing their job quite well (since the actual tomb hasn’t been opened yet).

The warriors and their colours

Our guide explained us that it’s very likely that they used a mould over real-life people to craft the faces of statues. I found this to be extraordinary and couldn’t stop imagining at them in their original shape and colour.

Indeed, though largely grey today, patches of paint hint at once brightly coloured clothes: red, green, blue, purple, colours that oxidise and vanish within minutes of exposure to air. This preservation challenge is one reason active excavation in Pit 1 has been deliberately slowed: archaeologists are working to develop techniques to preserve the colour before more warriors are uncovered.

💡 One of the incredible discoveries related to the Terracotta Army was a lost pigment named as ‘Han Purple”. Indeed, purple is a complex colour that doesn’t naturally occur in nature and needs to be created synthetically. It appears the chemical knowledge on the creation of the colour purple was already discovered in 246 BCE in northern China. The formula included a complex, barium copper silicate. Its creation required the precise firing of barium, copper, and silica at extremely high temperatures (around 950–1,050 °C). The knowledge of how to create this complex colour vanished around 220 AD at the end of the Han Dynasty, remaining a mystery until modern chemists successfully recreated its complex formula in 1992.

At the end of Pit 1, you can see the warriors that are currently in “assembly mode” by archaeologists. It seems that a single warrior takes years to be restored and put together again.

Pit 2 — The Military Detail

Smaller than Pit 1, but more interesting from a military history perspective, Pit 2 contains a more complex arrangement: cavalry, chariots, and mixed infantry formations that give a clearer picture of Qin military organisation. Several individual warriors are displayed up close here, allowing you to examine the craftsmanship in a way the main pit doesn’t permit. This is also where the senior commander discovered in 2024 was found.

Pit 3 — The Command Centre

The smallest of the three pits, and often the most overlooked looks like a work in progress. Pit 3 contains the command post ruins, a smaller group of senior figures that archaeologists interpret as the high command of the army. Fewer warriors, but the ones present tend to be of the highest rank, and the arrangement illuminates the hierarchical thinking behind the entire enterprise. It seems like there is not much to see but in reality, this pit is still excavated and visitors can observe the reality of what an open excavation looks like and it’s very interesting.

They discovered also a Pit 4, but this was strangely left empty. Studies suggest this was perhaps left unfinished by its builders.

The Bronze Chariot Exhibition Hall

Do not skip this. The hall displays two extraordinary bronze chariots and horses excavated in 1980: four horses pulling each chariot, with a terracotta charioteer at the reins. The level of miniaturised detail, the articulated reins, the individual links of harness chains, the delicately rendered mane of each horse, is really unbelievable. These are among the finest bronze objects ever produced in the ancient world.

What Most Visitors Miss

The Mausoleum Mound Itself

Located 1.5 kilometres west of the warrior pits, the burial mound of Qin Shi Huang himself can be visited as part of your ticket. From the outside, it looks like an unremarkable grass-covered hill, which is precisely why it remained hidden until 1974.

The burial mound has not been excavated. The Chinese government has deliberately left it sealed, both out of respect and because current technology cannot adequately preserve what may be inside. Ancient texts describe rivers of mercury flowing through the interior, automatic crossbows primed to fire at intruders, and a jewelled ceiling map of the heavens. Ground-penetrating radar surveys have confirmed unusually high mercury levels in the surrounding soil, suggesting the ancient accounts may not be entirely mythological. Because this can pose a safety hazard to those excavating and also we don’t have yet the technology to preserve the colours that would vanish within minutes in contact with the air, the tomb is for now sealed.

It is one of the greatest unopened rooms in the world. Standing at the foot of that unassuming hill with that knowledge is a peculiar feeling. Perhaps if you want to have a more visual feeling of it before your visit, you can watch China’s mega-tombs with Albert Lin on Disney+.

The Ongoing Excavation

Part of what makes a visit to the Terracotta Army unlike almost any other museum experience is that the archaeology is still happening. Parts of Pit 1 remain unearthed. Archaeologists work on site, and on a good day you can watch them. The site is not a finished exhibit, it is an active dig. That living quality, the sense that the story isn’t over yet, is something photographs simply cannot convey.

Visiting the Terracotta Army with kids

When I told around that I took my two 5-years-old twins to the Terracotta Army, people had very funny reactions. Some were shocked, some other were skeptical and I am not afraid to say that at the beginning I was skeptical too. Especially because my kids are not really the museum-type of kids (although they did pretty well at the Rijksmuseum a few years ago). However, I was determined to transmit all my passion about the Terracotta Army to them so I used a clever strategy: preparation.

Prepare your kid for the trip

If your kids know what they will see, it’s less likely that they will be bored or disrupting during the visit. I had a book about the Terracotta Army at home with lots of pictures (if you don’t have a book, you can use internet). I used this book as my ground to explain the kids what we would have done on that day. Of course, my explanation of the site was very basic (they are 5 years old after all!), but enough to make them understanding we were going to an important place.

During the visit

On the day of the visit, they were pretty excited and our guide was amazing with them. When we arrived in Pit 1 it was very crowded. The kids were a bit upset to not able to see, but we managed to find a good spot and their reaction was incredible. I think they matched the pictures of the book with reality and something clicked in their head as they started asking so many questions to the guide. Some of their questions were hilarious, such as Chris asked “why their hands look like the Lego ones?”. Indeed, the figures’ hands looks like they are holding something but they are empty-handed and the guide explained to them they were holdings weapons that now are in the museum or lost (if made by wooden).

I was quite impressed on how good they hold the whole visit, we took a brief ice cream pause between Pit 2 and Pit 3. We also bought a considerable amount of children souvenirs. Their favourite one was the “Terracatta Warrior” plush that they hold dearly for the whole trip. It’s actually very nice and it has a children-friendly explanation of the warriors, plus lots of stickers. Overall, even if the Museum is not “children-friendly” by itself, but there are ways to make this visit suitable for the little ones.

Crowds can be the main issue as they stand in the way of the children affecting their view. So, I recommend going either very early in the morning, or very late in the afternoon. these are the best times for crowd management. Concerning food and shopping facilities, the area is really full of places where to stop so this shouldn’t be an issue.

Practical Tips

• Arrive very early or very late. The site opens at 8:30am and the first hour is noticeably calmer. By 10:30am in peak season, Pit 1 fills up significantly. Very late time (after 3 pm) tend to be much calmer too. Travelling off season grants much greater chances of lower crowd.
• Allow proper time. Three hours is a comfortable minimum for all three pits and the Bronze Chariot Hall. Half a day if you want to include the mausoleum mound.
• Wear comfortable shoes. The complex involves significant walking, both between the entrance and the pits, and within the exhibition buildings.
• Food and drink. Cafes and restaurants are on site but pricier than in Xi’an. Bring water, especially in summer.
• Photography is permitted in all three pits and the Bronze Chariot Hall. Flash photography is not allowed. The light inside Pit 1 is challenging, a wide-angle lens and patience serve better than trying to capture individual warriors from a distance.
• Tourist Traps. There is a wide range of further attractions inside the complex, from VR experience to small exhibitions (that didn’t look legit), to photo opportunities. All of this is unnecessary to the visit and looks a lot like classic tourist traps. Of course, if you are happy to include those experience, good for you, but be mindful that each of these have an extra cost.

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