Walk through
a city that
isn’t there.
Find Ming Guiyang inside the modern city: its missing gates, surviving thresholds, revived river and the street names that still remember the walls.
A guide to looking closely. Historic maps, modern streets, thirteen places to investigate, and room for your own findings.
Put the old city under your feet.
Click a numbered gate or lettered landmark. Drag to pan; use + / − to zoom. The dashed corridors interpret the historical walls; solid route lines follow the mapped street network.
想看现存古建筑，可优先寻访1、B、C。「现存」不等于明代原构，具体年代见各点标注。
Approximate historical alignment; not navigation
The wall corridors are interpretive traces of a later nine-gate diagram, fitted to the reported gate areas. They show the broad spatial structure; they are not surveyed Ming foundations. Marker D preserves the alternative earlier north-gate reference. Read the mapping method ↓
Choose what you want to discover.
I would begin with the inner city. The northern circuit becomes more rewarding once you can recognise what has disappeared.
Distances are approximate calculations from the OpenStreetMap walking graph, including short links to the pins. They are planning estimates, not a checked turn-by-turn route. Follow public paths, legal crossings and on-site signs. Suggested durations include the observation stops in this guide.
How I would use a day here
Start at the military-command exhibition if it is open. Take a photograph of the model and its source label. Walk with that reference in hand; give the east-gate area the longest stop. Finish around Jiaxiu and the river. Add the northern circuit as a second half-day if the process of tracing vanished boundaries appeals to you.
Use the Chinese search names in the field cards for local navigation. There is no need to complete every gate to have a coherent day.
Access and pacing
A July 2026 heritage-centre notice gave seasonal hours of Tuesday–Sunday 09:00–18:00 and Monday 14:00–18:00 for Wenchang, Jiaxiu and Yangming Shrine; Cuiwei Garden ran later. The notice applies to the summer season and does not establish hours for your eventual trip.
Confirm the current notice before planning interiors. The new command exhibition’s regular opening hours were not verified. The Yangming detour involves hillside walking. Read the dated opening notice ↗
These are different moments,
not interchangeable pictures.
The city grew, gates moved, names changed and later maps remembered earlier arrangements. Compare relationships before trying to align every street.
Map-reading key / 古地图中英对照
These are limited-resolution reproductions, useful for orientation. The modern compilation contains a questionable exact dating statement for the Wanli map, so this guide identifies it by reign period and work rather than adopting that year.
Stone-city rebuilding and the Guizhou military command establish the early-Ming frame.
Guizhou becomes a province. The military institution precedes the province.
Wenchang and Jiaxiu foundations add cultural landmarks to the city and river.
After the 1622 siege, the northern extension adds four gates; accounts cite 1626 or 1627.
Road building removes much of the wall system. Old gate names outlive the structures.
Wall-trail interpretation, new connections and river revival make the history legible again.
Thirteen places.
Specific things to look for.
Tick what you find and keep your own notes. Notes stay in this browser where local storage is available; export them before switching devices.
Keep the layers honest.
A repaired gate, a lost gate’s name, a reconstructed building and an old river course tell different kinds of history.
What counts as a find?
Historic fabric: inspect the east-gate area and Wenchang, but use inscriptions and conservation records to date individual components.
Persistent geography: a river crossing or street alignment can be valuable evidence even where the buildings have vanished.
Later remembrance: Jiaxiu’s standing pavilion dates to 1909; the present Yangming shrine was founded in 1814. Their Ming associations remain meaningful.
Modern interpretation: the new gate installations and command exhibition help explain the old city. Their present-day construction is part of their identity.
The question to take with you
Ask at the exhibition: “这个沙盘上的柔远门，对应今天的勇烈路口，还是喷水池？依据的是哪一年的地图？”
“Does Rouyuan Gate on this model correspond to today’s Yonglie Road junction or Penshuichi? Which dated map is the evidence?”
How this atlas was made
Modern street and water geometry comes from an OpenStreetMap extract retrieved on 25 September 2026. Landmark coordinates use mapped features; vanished gates use the modern street areas reported in local historical writing. The approximate pins are not archaeological survey coordinates.
The dashed wall corridors were traced from a later nine-gate synthesis and fitted to nine gate anchors. That synthesis also shows later auxiliary gates. It supports a broad spatial comparison, not a claim that every drawn wall segment dates to the Ming. The fitting introduces distortion between anchors, especially near uncertain gate locations.
The historic map images are shown separately because their pictorial scales and the disputed north-gate sequence do not support an exact transparent overlay. A proper cadastral reconstruction would need dated high-resolution scans, additional fixed points and field verification.
Routes were calculated over the downloaded street graph, excluding motor-only roads and ways explicitly marked inaccessible. Pavement continuity, temporary works and crossing access have not been field-checked. Approximate pins can move the apparent route endpoint.
The maps and guide work without a network connection after download. External source links and live-map searches require internet access.