Weiyang District (未央区)
264.41 km² · Area 2019
Weiyang District (未央区, Wèiyāng Qū) lies north of Xi'an's city wall and covers 264.41 km² on 2019-era aggregator data — among the largest of the city's thirteen districts, and several times the size of the three inside the wall put together. Its government seat is at Zhangjiabao Subdistrict (张家堡街道).
It is named for Weiyang Palace (未央宫), the main palace of the Western Han capital Chang'an, founded under Liu Bang around 200 BC. Its ruins park is the district's southern half and is largely empty ground with foundations and interpretive markers — free, open around the clock, and reached from Line 1 at Zaohe station.
North of it sits Daming Palace, the Tang imperial palace built in 634 AD, destroyed in the wars that ended the dynasty in 904, and inscribed on the UNESCO Silk Roads list in 2014. The area between the two is the modern administrative and residential north of the city, arterials, housing estates and the Fengcheng 3rd Road corridor where the municipal government is based. There is very little here that a visitor would come to see by accident, and that is the honest shape of the district.
What it is actually like
Weiyang is not a tourist district, and the temptation is to pretend otherwise. What it actually is: the city's northern floor — wide arterials, housing estates, municipal offices — with two ruined imperial capitals embedded in it. Approach it as a purposeful half-day trip rather than as somewhere to wander into.
The contrast between the two sites is the thing to plan around. Daming Palace is a reconstructed heritage park: several square kilometres of landscaped ground with a Danfeng Gate site museum, a site museum and a 3D film, about ¥60 for the combination, and Line 4 stations at Daminggong and Hanyuandian on either flank. Weiyang Palace is the opposite — Han foundations in an open field, free, no ticket, no shade and little to read beyond the signage, and getting there is a 25–35 minute taxi from the Bell Tower.
Neither is a standing ruin and it is worth being clear about that before you go. What survives of both is foundation lines and earthwork. If you want built architecture from these periods you need to go elsewhere; if you want to stand on the actual plan of a Han or Tang palace, this is the only place in Xi'an that offers it.