This slice of restored Ming Inner City Wall runs along the length of the northern flank of Chongwenmen Dongdajie and is attached to a slender strip of park. It's all that is left of the original 24km-long city wall, which started being demolished in the 1960s to make room for new roads and the subway system.
The wall stretches from the former site of Chóngwén Mén (崇文门; Chóngwén Gate), one of the nine gates of the Inner City Wall, to the Southeast Corner Watchtower and then turns north for a short distance along Jianguomen Nandajie to Beijingzhan Dongjie. Chóngwén Mén was also called Shuì Mén (税门; Tax Gate) as the capital tax bureau lay just outside the gate. You can walk the park’s length, taking in its higgledy-piggledy contours and the interior layers of stone in parts of the wall that have collapsed. The restored sections run for just over 2km, rising to a height of around 15m and interrupted every 80m with buttresses extending to a maximum depth of 39m. The most interesting sections of wall are those closer to their original and more dilapidated state and some of the bricks come complete with bullet holes.
