Lintong District (临潼区)
915.97 km² · Area 2019
Lintong District (临潼区, Líntóng Qū) is the district 35 km east of downtown Xi'an that holds the Terracotta Army, and for almost every visitor that is the whole reason to leave the city. Administratively it is considerably more than one attraction: 915.97 km² on 2019-era figures, larger than eight of Xi'an's other twelve districts — only Chang'an, Lantian and Zhouzhi are bigger — with its government seat at Lishan (骊山街道), named for the mountain that rises over the whole area. Lintong County became Lintong District in 1992.
It has been imperial country since the First Emperor chose the foot of Mount Li for his tomb; the hot springs did the rest of the marketing, drawing Tang emperors to the same water and leaving Huaqing Palace as their bathing place.
Understand its character before you plan. The sights fully justify the journey, but Lintong is a day-trip district, not a base. The town itself is functional sprawl with little reason to linger after dark, and the district beyond it is agricultural. Treat Lintong as one well-organized day.
Here is how the day works. Leave Xi'an around 8:00. Metro Line 9 is the spine: ride it to Huaqing Pool (华清池) station, then hop a taxi or local bus (602/613) for the last 15 minutes to the Terracotta Army. The budget alternative is tourist bus 306 from the railway station's east square, about ¥7 and an hour; a DiDi runs ¥120–150 door to door. Do the army first, before the tour-bus waves, then double back to Huaqing Palace for the afternoon, when the light drops onto Mount Li. You are home for dinner.
One evening footnote: in season, roughly April to October, Huaqing Palace stages The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (长恨歌, Chánghèn Gē), an open-air drama performed against the mountain itself. It is worth staying for — but book a car home in advance, because the last metro will not wait.
What it is actually like
The physical shape of this district explains everything. The Terracotta Army sits on the Lintong plain at the foot of Mount Li (骊山, Líshān), a small peak with an outsized history — the place where the First Emperor was buried, where the story of the emperor who refused to drown is set, and where the Tang came for the springs below the same slope. The archaeology is not one site but a cluster: the army, the Huaqing Palace complex a few kilometres west of it, and the Qin tomb mound itself, which you are not permitted to walk into but which shapes the entire layout of the area.
Beyond the visitor corridor the district is farmland and village. Lintong grows a good share of the pomegranates (临潼石榴) that Xi'an eats, and it was, until 1966, the county that contained Yanliang to the north-west — so on a district map the aviation district looks like part of Lintong's fabric. It is not; Yanliang has been separate since it was made a district of Xi'an in that year.
Whether you need this district is a simple question with a simple answer. You need it if you have not been to the Terracotta Army, because that is the one site in the Xi'an area no first visit can skip, and everything else here — Huaqing Palace, Mount Li, the hot springs — is best understood as the same story told from different angles. If you have already been, there is no second reason strong enough on its own, and the district's size on a map should not tempt you into driving its length for the sake of completeness.
Where to sleep: as a day trip this is the default, and the honest advice for almost everyone is to sleep in Xi'an proper. See our hotel guide for the full list.
Yanliang is not part of Lintong, despite what maps suggest
Yanliang (阎良区) shows up in most people's mental map of Lintong because of how the two are historically related: Yanliang was a town (阎良镇) in Lintong County until June 1966, when it was made a district of Xi'an directly. It is a separate administrative district with its own government, sharing only a border.
The 915.97 km² on the district's area figure therefore describes farmland, Qin-era sites and Mount Li's slopes — not the aircraft industry to the north-west. If you are planning a day out east of the city, the Terracotta Army and Huaqing Palace are what you are driving to; Yanliang sits in the opposite direction and is covered on its own page.