The Badaling Great Wall is located in the Yanqing County to the northwest of Beijing.
The Badaling Great Wall is the most intact and representative part of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It winds and lies among high mountains and lofty ridges in Yanqing County, like a huge dragon whistling around, powerful and majestic. Due to its strategical location and difficulty to access, the Badaling Great Wall has been the place of strategic importance since ancient time. There was a famous saying that it is the Badaling not the Juyong Pass that is difficult to access. On the cliff there are two words Natural Barrier. Therefore the governments of the past dynasties dispatched large numbers of troops here.
The Badaling Great Wall was first built in the first year (1505) of Emperor Hongwu's reign in the Ming Dynasty. In the 18thyear of the Hongzhi reign, it was repaired with stones and bricks. There were frequent repairs during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911). The fortress has two gate towers: the eastern one is called Outpost to the Juyong Pass and the western one is the Lock on the Northern Gateway. On both arched holes of the two gates is a flat roof, around which are battlements laid with bricks. There are breaches on the south and north sides of the plat roof. The eastern plat roof is connected with the walls of the fortress while the western one is jointed with the Great Wall.
The fortress and circumvallation are all built of rectangular stone slabs and large bricks. The wall of Badaling has a total length of 3,741 meters with an average height of 8 meters. The highest part is 15 meters The base of the wall is 6,5 meters wide and the top is 5.8 meters wide. On both sides of the walls are built the defense works such as watchtowers, wall roofs,parapets,crenels,peepholes, loopholes and so on. The fortress outside the northern gate used to be the command post of the defending troops in the Ming Dynasty, where can hold about 700 or 800 soldiers at a time.
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