Terracotta Army, Xi'an, Xi’an

Terracotta Army tickets: price and how to book as a foreigner

A ticket costs ¥120 all year and is valid for one day. It covers the three warrior pits, the exhibition halls and Lishan Garden, where the emperor's burial mound is, with a free shuttle between them. There's no walk-up sale at the gate: you book online, in your own name, with your passport.

There are three official channels: the museum's website, where you can choose a passport as your ID, and two WeChat accounts, 秦始皇帝陵博物院 and 兵马俑票务在线. The English version of the museum's site sends you to Trip.com for tickets, which is the easiest route if you don't use WeChat. Travel guides say each date opens 7 days ahead; the museum doesn't publish the window, so start checking a week out.

Type your name and passport number exactly as in the passport. Children up to 1.4 m go free but must be added to an adult's booking. The museum's ¥60 student price and free entry for over-65s are written for Chinese nationals, so expect to pay the full fare. Refunds are possible until you pass the ticket check and go back to your card in 3–5 working days.

Paying: the booking channels and the metro run on Alipay and WeChat Pay, which accept most foreign Visa and Mastercard cards once linked and verified with your passport. Set this up before you fly. On site, cafés and shops mostly want app payments too, so carry a little cash as a backup.

Terracotta Army opening hours and crowds

From 16 March to 15 November, entry runs 8:30–17:00 and the site closes at 18:30. From 16 November to 15 March, entry runs 8:30–16:30 and it closes at 18:00. Ticket checks at the pits and in Lishan Garden stop at the same time. There's no weekly closing day; holiday hours can change.

The museum admits up to 65,000 people a day, then stops selling. Guides put the busiest stretch at 10:00 to 15:00, when tour coaches arrive. For Pit 1 without a wall of phones in front of you, come at opening time or after 15:00.

Mind the end of the day: the shuttle to the mound and the buses back to the city fill up, and DiDi pickups take longer at closing. Don't start your visit after 14:00.

What to see: the pits and Lishan Garden

• Entrance — the north entrance by the visitor service centre, about 15 minutes' walk from the car park according to guides, or ¥5 by electric cart.
• Pit 1 — the biggest and the famous one: long parallel trenches with ranks of infantry. Go here first while it's quieter.
• Pit 2 — cavalry, infantry, war chariots and kneeling archers.
• Pit 3 — the smallest: a command post with officers and a chariot.
• Exhibition hall — finds from the pits and weapons you can't make out from the trench railings.
• Shuttle to Lishan Garden — free, from the square by the emperor's statue. The last runs queue at the end of the day, so leave the pits by about 16:20.
• Lishan Garden — the emperor's wooded burial mound and halls of finds from around the tomb. Guides say the bronze chariots, found in 1980, are shown here. An electric cart round the park costs ¥15.

How long do you need, and is it worth it?

The museum suggests 1.5 hours each for the pits and Lishan Garden — about 3 hours in all. Add 1.5–2 hours each way by public transport and it becomes most of a day.

Is it worth it? Yes, if history and scale move you at all: nothing else in the world looks like Pit 1, and it's the reason most travellers come to Xi'an. If you only have one day and won't spend half of it travelling, the Shaanxi History Museum in the city is the better choice.

Expect a lot of walking between and inside the halls, which are vast, so dress for the weather and bring water and a snack — cafés on site mostly want app payments.

What is the Terracotta Army?

The Terracotta Army is a working excavation rather than a gallery. Vast halls have been built over three pits found by farmers digging a well in 1974, and you look down on rows of soldiers, horses and chariots standing where they were placed over two thousand years ago. Its official name is Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum.

The figures were buried in 210–209 BC beside the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the ruler who first unified China. Work on the tomb started in 246 BC, when he was 13, and the historian Sima Qian says some 700,000 labourers built it. Archaeologists estimate more than 8,000 soldiers, and only part has been dug out.

The emperor's mound itself, 1.5 km west of the pits in Lishan Garden, has never been opened. The whole mausoleum was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987.

Guided tour or on your own?

On your own is cheaper: a ticket and a few yuan for the metro and bus. The catch is booking with a passport in a Chinese-language system and paying through Alipay or WeChat, plus dodging touts at the bus stops.

A tour from Xi'an solves both: the ticket is issued in your name, you're dropped at the right entrance and driven back. A guide also explains what you're looking at — without one, Pits 2 and 3 can seem half empty. Many tours add Huaqing Palace on the way.

The middle way is to take the metro and hire an official guide inside, after the ticket check — never a 'guide' in the car park.

Terracotta Army or Shaanxi History Museum?

Nothing replaces the warriors, but they take half a day with the journey. The history museum is close to the centre and also shows terracotta figures from the tomb. With two days in Xi'an, do both.

Xi'an's historic sights compared

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How to do it right

• Arrive at 8:30 and head straight to Pit 1 — it's at its emptiest before the tour groups.
• See the pits first, then shuttle to Lishan Garden: you won't come back, and the last shuttles are packed.
• Screenshot your booking and the museum's Chinese name — signal inside the halls can be weak.
• Google Maps doesn't work in China without roaming or a VPN; use a local map app or an offline map.
• Ignore anyone at the station who says the bus is broken or tickets are gone — it's a scam.
• Pits 2 and 3 look modest without explanation — an audio guide or a guide inside pays off.
• No flash in the halls, and drones are banned around the site.
• Going by metro? Huaqing Palace by Huaqingchi station is an easy add-on on the way back.

Questions