Great Wall of China

Where is Great Wall of China?

You will find it in Badaling, near Beijing, China.

40.3542° N, 116.0069° E

The story behind it

Long ago, Chinese states built walls to guard against raiders from the north. Over centuries, different dynasties joined and extended these walls, but most of what visitors see today was built by the Ming Dynasty between 1368 and 1644, after Mongol armies had invaded China. Ming engineers rebuilt the wall using brick and stone instead of packed earth, adding watchtowers where soldiers could send smoke signals if enemies approached. The wall stretches for thousands of kilometres across deserts, grasslands and steep mountains, though many older sections have crumbled into ruins. It never fully stopped every invasion, but it controlled trade routes and border crossings for centuries. Today you can walk along restored sections like Badaling and Mutianyu near Beijing, climbing steep stone stairways with sweeping views of the mountains, while more remote parts remain wild and overgrown.

Find it on the globe

Great Wall of China is there as a little three-dimensional model of the building itself. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.

How was it built?

Builders used whatever stone was nearby, cutting blocks by hand and hauling them up steep slopes on ropes, wooden sledges and their own backs, since there were no machines. In the Ming era, workers also fired hard bricks in kilns and mixed mortar from sticky rice flour and lime, which hardened almost like cement. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers, farmers and prisoners worked on the wall, and many died from exhaustion or accidents. Building the Ming sections alone took over 200 years to complete.