Beijing to restore an ancient tower

Updated: 2014-01-09 14:48

By Zheng Xin (chinadaily.com.cn)

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Beijing is to restore one of its seven ancient city gates that was destroyed decades ago during the city's outer urban demolition.

Beijing will reproduce the Zuoanmen tower, with the walls of the site also restored, in an attempt to repair the city's cultural relics.

The tower, to be built on the inside moat bank on the southeast corner of Second Ring Road, will cover an area of 870 square meters. The location differs slightly from the plan in 2011, according to the cultural commission of the Dongcheng district.

The restoration will mostly cover the greenbelt beside the riverbank, and the preliminary design has been approved by the city government, the commission said.

Due to the lack of historical materials related to the tower, the restoration plan is mainly based on planar graphs of the architecture in 1949 and 1955, as well as a picture taken by a Swedish visitor in the 1920s.

One of the seven city gates of the outer capital, Zuoanmen, literally left gate, was demolished during the city's outer urban demolition in the late 1950s.