Qin Shi Huang: Capital, Mountain, Wall and Tomb

In 221 BC Qin Shi Huang eliminated the six rival states and made Xianyang the centre of the first centralised empire in Chinese history. The city had been the Qin capital since 350 BC, planned by the minister Shang Yang. The emperor gathered the realm's weapons here to be melted into twelve towering statues, and built copies of the conquered states' palaces along the Wei River. In 206 BC the rebel Xiang Yu burned the city.

Location precision: The ancient city is spread over a wide area; the pin marks the excavated Qin city site, not a single building.

In 219 BC the emperor climbed Mount Tai and held a ceremony on the summit, proclaiming the unity of his empire in a well-known inscription. The rite belonged to the Feng and Shan sacrifices: Heaven honoured on the summit, Earth at the foot of the mountain. The mountain carries more than 1,800 stone inscriptions. This is documented history, but the exact spot of the Qin rite is not marked here.

Location precision: The pin marks the mountain; the sources do not fix the exact spot of the Qin ceremony.

Legend, not proof. Tradition says the emperor visited Zhifu Island while searching for the elixir of life, and that he sent Xu Fu with ships carrying hundreds of young men and women to find the mystical Mount Penglai. They never returned; legends claim they reached Japan. Local names such as Shihuang Avenue recall him, but no Qin-era inscriptions from the island have been archaeologically verified.

Location precision: The visit is only traditionally attributed to the emperor; the pin marks the island itself.

To hold back the Xiongnu nomads, the emperor ordered new walls linking the fortifications along the northern frontier. Hundreds of thousands of workers were mobilised, and an unknown number died. General Meng Tian led an army of 300,000 against the Xiongnu. No surviving record gives the length or course of the Qin walls, and they have largely eroded away, so the pin is only a stand-in.

Location precision: The Qin wall's course is unrecorded; the pin marks a stretch mapped as Qin-dynasty wall in Inner Mongolia.

In 214 BC the emperor ordered a canal joining the Xiang and Li rivers, meant to support an attack on the Baiyue peoples of the south. The designer was Shi Lu. The canal in Xing'an County, near Guilin, remains one of the best-preserved such projects in the world.

Location precision: The canal is a long waterway; the pin marks its Wikipedia coordinate in Xing'an County, not one structure.

Construction of the Epang Palace began in 212 BC on the south bank of the Wei River, outside Xianyang, and went on after his death. Its rammed-earth platform measures 1,320 m east to west, 420 m north to south and 8 m high. Archaeology suggests that perhaps only the front hall was ever built, contradicting the opulent literary accounts. Sima Qian does not say it burned, though it was long assumed to have.

Visitor guidance: The site has been a nationally protected heritage site since 1961.

The emperor died in July or August 210 BC at Shaqiu during his fifth eastern tour, aged 49; the cause is unknown. The chancellor Li Si hid the death behind carts of rotten fish. According to Sima Qian, 700,000 men were sent to the tomb at Mount Li, with mercury simulating rivers. In 1974 farmers digging a well found the Terracotta Army, about 1.5 km east, its soldiers facing east.

Visitor guidance: A museum complex has been built over the excavated pits.