The Ming Tombs—The Ming Tomb is the best-preserved imperial mausoleum structure buried most emperors. Thirteen of the sixteen Ming emperors are buried in this picturesque valley with orchards and rolling hills.

The Ming Tombs —— Dingling Tomb

The Chingling Tomb

Emperor Wan Li (1573-1620) ordered the construction of his own tomb when he was 22 and it took six years to complete the construction which cost about two year's land taxes of the entire empire. The Emperor gave a party in his own funeral chamber, so the chronicles say, to mark its completion, and thirty years later he was buried in it amid a splendid ceremony.
True to form, Emperor Wan Li never formally answered any of the petitions that his officials sent asking what they should do about the foreign priests and their request to live in Beijing. Indeed, when Father Ricci died nine years later, they were still waiting for the Emperor's response to their petition.

      Dingling consists of the underground palace and surface structures, most of which are now in ruin, leaving the magnificent soul Tower still standing in a spacious courtyard. Each corner of the Tower is a single block of stone. The rafters, beams and architraves are also carved out of stone and decorated with colorful motifs. The Tower houses a large stone tablet inscribed with Wan Li's posthumous title.Immediately behind the tower is the burial mound encircled by a 700-meter-long brick wall. The mound is called the Precious City and directly beneath it is a mammoth tomb-the Underground Palace, where the emperor and his two empresses were expected to live an eternal life in splendor and luxury.

      The Underground Palace lies 27 metes below the surface. A flight of stone steps leads down to the main entrance, which is a richly carved gateway with a double-leaf marble door. Each leaf, 4 tons in weight, hinges on an axis which is carved from the same piece of marble. The lower end of the axis rests in a hole on the stone doorstep and the upper end in a hole of the bronze lintel which weights ten tons. Each marble leaf, incredible, is thicker near the axis and tapers off toward the middle of the door. This allows one person to open and close the massive door easily. The door was ingeniously sealed on the burial scene by a stone bar, known as the "Self-acting stone." Once put in place from inside, this bolt would prevent the door from ever being opened again.

       The Underground Palace consists of three aligned vaults: the Ante-Chamber, the Sacrificial Chamber and the Burial Chamber. Each chamber is provided with an entrance gate as massive as the main gate.
       The Sacrificial Chamber, flanked with an annex chamber on each side, contains three white thrones.
       In the Burial Chamber, the largest part of the tomb, stand three red-lacquered coffins, side by side on a white marble platform.The one in the middle is the Emperor's coffin, with the First Empress's on the left and the Second Empress's on the right.Inside each coffin there is another coffin, and thus, each imperial corpse is held in two coffins, one kept within the other.

The Dingling is another famed tomb here. Over 3,000 burial objects were unearthed from the tomb. Among them is a gold crown made with gold thread.The empress crown is inlaid with kingfisher feathers. The diamonds and precious stones glitter under the light.
The front hall, considered the square of the Palace, has no building within it. No special artifacts remain in either the left and right palaces that are about 7 meters high, six meters wide, and 26 meters long. However, each has a centrally placed white marble coffin bed, the surface of which is covered with gold bricks. On each bed there is a square hole filled with loess. This is the so-called "Gold Well". A paved path leads to the central hall where there are three white marble thrones. Incense, candles and flowers were set in front of the thrones. Before each of them, there are glazed 'Five Offerings' and a blue china jar that would have been filled with sesame oil to be used for lamps. The rear hall is the main and biggest part of the Palace. The coffins of Emperor Zhu Yijun and his two empresses are in this palace. There are also some precious items displayed with these coffins; among them is the gold imperial crown, one of the world's rearest treasures.

Most of the relics (some three thousand pieces )are on display in the Dingling Museum Exhibition Hall, which has attracted millions of visitors from China and abroad since the museum opened in 1959.