What the wall is
UNESCO's description is the shortest accurate one. In about 220 BC, under Qin Shi Huang, sections of earlier fortifications were joined to form a single defensive system against invasion from the north. Construction went on, with long interruptions, until the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), by which time it had become the largest military structure in the world.
Two consequences follow from that. The wall is not continuous: it is a set of separate lines, built in different centuries by different rulers, some running parallel and some never meeting. And it is not built of one thing. The brick and dressed stone familiar from photographs belong to the Ming wall in the mountains north of Beijing; much of the older wall, and most of the wall in the west, is rammed earth.
The state survey published in 2012 found remains in 15 provincial-level regions, and counted 43,721 individual heritage sites — wall sections, defence works, passes and ruins.
How long it is
Two official figures, and they measure different things.
The survey published in 2012 gave 21,196.18 kilometres for all branches and all periods. An earlier announcement in 2009 gave 8,851.8 kilometres for the Ming-dynasty wall alone, and the breakdown matters: 6,259.6 kilometres of built wall, 359.7 kilometres of trench, and 2,232.5 kilometres of natural barrier such as hills and rivers counted as defensive line. So about a quarter of the headline Ming figure is terrain rather than masonry.
The figure of "over 6,000 kilometres" that appears in older accounts was the accepted number before 2009, and is close to the Ming survey's built-wall component. It is obsolete rather than invented.
Where it begins and ends
Older accounts run the wall from Shanhaiguan on the coast to Jiayuguan in the desert, and those are the two ends that UNESCO mapped when the wall was inscribed. The 2009 survey moved one of them: it traced the Ming wall from Hushan in Liaoning province, well to the east of Shanhaiguan, to Jiayuguan in Gansu province.
Shanhaiguan, near Qinhuangdao in Hebei province, is where the wall reaches the Bohai Sea, at a point called Laolongtou, the Old Dragon Head. The China Great Wall Museum there closed for rebuilding on 29 December 2023; in May 2025 the Beijing municipal government reported that it was expected to reopen at the end of 2026 or early in 2027.
Jiayuguan is a fortress rather than a stretch of wall, standing at the western end of the Ming line. The older spellings "Shan-Hai Pass" and "Chia-Yu Pass" refer to these same two places.
World Heritage status
The Great Wall was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987, under five of the six cultural criteria. The inscription names the whole wall, but the property mapped for UNESCO consists of three places: Badaling, Shanhaiguan and Jiayuguan.
The wall is not visible from space
This is the most persistent claim made about the wall and it is false, and the authority against it is NASA's own.
NASA published the correction under its own name in 2005. Its chief scientist for Earth observation, Kamlesh Lulla, said that "it is very, very difficult to distinguish the Great Wall of China in astronaut photography", the problem being that the wall's materials closely match the surrounding ground. Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, reported that he could not see it. From the Moon it is not a question at all: Alan Bean of Apollo 12 said "no man-made object is visible at this scale".
Three genuine qualifications, which should not be collapsed back into the myth. It has been photographed from orbit — Leroy Chiao took the first confirmed picture from the International Space Station in November 2004, using a 180 millimetre lens on a sunny day shortly after snowfall; he did not see the wall himself and was not certain his photograph showed it. It is readily visible in spaceborne radar imagery, where it appears as a line across the desert. And the "only man-made object" half of the claim fails independently: from low orbit, cities, airports, motorways and reservoirs are all far more conspicuous than a narrow wall the colour of the land it runs through.
The sections reached from Beijing
Most visits are day trips from Beijing, and the sections differ more in crowding and condition than in age: all are Ming.
- Badaling, in Yanqing district about 60 kilometres north-west of the city centre, is the most visited section and one of the three places mapped for UNESCO. It received 9.9 million visitors in 2018. Since 1 June 2019 entry has been limited to 65,000 people a day, with tickets sold in advance in the visitor's own name. A high-speed railway station, Badaling Great Wall, opened beneath the site on 30 December 2019 on the line from Beijing North to Zhangjiakou; at 102 metres below ground it is described as the deepest high-speed station in the world.
- Mutianyu, in Huairou district, is the restored section set among wooded hills north-east of the city. Its history, its booking arrangements and its summer evening opening are set out under Beijing.
- Simatai, in Miyun district, was closed in June 2010 and reopened in January 2014 together with Gubei Water Town, a resort built at its foot. The wall is reached through the resort, so a visit to the wall alone has to be reserved in advance. Part of it is lit and open after dark. It is no longer possible to walk through from Simatai to Jinshanling.
- Jinshanling lies just over the boundary in Luanping county, Hebei province, about 130 kilometres from central Beijing. The official Beijing tourism body dates the first wall there to 1368, under the general Xu Da, and its rebuilding to 1567 onwards, under Qi Jiguang and Tan Lun. It runs for 10.5 kilometres and is described as one of the better-preserved sections.
- Huanghuacheng, in Huairou district, is known as the lakeside section.
- Jiankou, between Mutianyu and Huanghuacheng, is the steep, unrestored wall of many photographs. It has been under protective restoration since 2016 and is not open. In January 2025 the Huairou authorities announced a first official route, between defence towers 141 and 145, to open during that year.
In March 2026 the Beijing municipal government reported that Yanqing district planned to open the continuous stretch between Badaling and Huajiayao during the year, as part of a 16.5-kilometre route linking four sections.
What is not allowed
National rules came first. The State Council's Regulations on the Protection of the Great Wall took effect on 1 December 2006. They prohibit taking earth, bricks or stones from the wall, carving or writing on it, driving vehicles on or over it, and organising activities on sections that have not been opened as tourist areas.
That last rule is the one that affects visitors. The unrestored stretches often called the "wild wall" are, in law, closed. Beijing has enforced this with fines — in 2020 the range reported for the city was 200 to 30,000 yuan — and its own Regulations on the Conservation of the Great Wall, in force since 1 March 2026, allow district authorities to use electronic fences to warn people off closed sections. The same regulations provide for visitor limits and booking on the sections that are opened.
Before going
Booking in the visitor's own name, with entry on the identity document used to book, is the rule at the managed sections, and the daily limit at Badaling has been reached in the peak season. Closures for extreme weather are announced through each site's own notices. Entry requirements for the country, and the official travel advice, are set out under China.