Terracotta Army: Tickets, Transport and Timing
Prices, the real bus 306 and the fake one, which pit to see first, and why most visitors spend their best hour in the wrong hall.
Two things go wrong at the Terracotta Army, and neither is the ticket.
The first is the bus. The area around Xi'an railway station is one of the most persistent locations in China for unofficial tourist buses, and the scam is specifically built around this attraction.
The second is the order you walk it. Almost everyone goes straight to Pit 1, spends their fresh attention and their good light on the famous view, and then trudges through the two smaller pits feeling like the visit is over. Reversing that is free and it substantially improves the day.
The essentials
Official name: Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum Admission: ¥120 peak season, ¥90 off-peak Opening: 08:30–17:00 (16 March – 15 November), 08:30–16:30 (16 November – 15 March). Ticket sales generally close an hour before. Booking: real-name, passport required. Released about seven days ahead, and ten days around public holidays. Location: about 40 km east of Xi'an, in Lintong District Time needed: three to four hours on site, five to seven hours door to door
The ticket covers both the Terracotta Warriors pits and the Lishan Garden site around the burial mound of Qin Shi Huang himself, about 1.5 km away, with a free shuttle between them.
Most visitors never go to Lishan Garden. More on that below.
Booking
Reserve online in advance. The on-site window exists but the queue at 10:00 on a Saturday is not how you want to start.
Booking is real-name against your passport. Enter the number exactly as printed — every letter and digit, no spaces, no added country code — and carry the same physical passport on the day.
Each person needs their own booking, including children. Under-height and under-age discounts exist; the thresholds are set by the museum and are worth checking if you are travelling with children, but bring documents regardless.
If the official channel is difficult to use from abroad, a licensed platform or a local operator selling entry plus transport is a reasonable alternative. Expect a service fee. The attraction booking guide covers how to tell a legitimate seller from a reseller.
Getting there
Bus 306 — the right one
This is the standard independent option and it is good.
Where: the eastern square of Xi'an Railway Station. Not the western square, not the street outside. Route: 306, also signed as tourist line 5 (游5). Times: first departure around 07:00, last around 19:00, roughly every 10 minutes. Journey: about an hour. Fare: low, paid on board or by mobile payment.
The bus also stops at the Huaqing Palace hot springs on the way, which is a legitimate optional stop.
Bus 306 — the fake one
Here is the pattern, and it has been running for years.
You arrive at Xi'an railway station. Someone approaches you, speaking some English, and asks if you are going to the Terracotta Warriors. They point at a bus. The bus may be numbered 306. They may say the official bus is full, or has moved, or is not running today.
The real bus 306 does not have people soliciting passengers. It has a queue and a marked stand and staff who are not interested in you.
The fake buses take longer, stop at a jade factory or a "museum" you did not ask to visit, apply pressure to buy, and in some cases drop you at a smaller replica site rather than the actual museum.
The rule: if someone approaches you about transport, that is not the transport you want. Walk to the marked official stand on the eastern square and join the queue.
The scams guide covers this and the related patterns.
DiDi or taxi
About an hour each way, straightforward, and you can arrange a return. The most reliable option if you are three or four people, and not expensive split between you.
Have the destination in Chinese characters ready: 秦始皇帝陵博物院.
Metro plus connection
Xi'an Metro Line 9 runs east towards Lintong with a bus connection at the far end. Workable, slower than the direct bus, and only worth it if you happen to be staying near the line.
Organised tours
Widely sold and mostly fine, but read what is included. A tour that costs suspiciously little is usually funded by shopping stops. Ask directly whether there are any retail stops on the itinerary, and if the answer is vague, book something else.
What is actually there
Three excavated pits and a bronze chariot hall, arranged around a large plaza.
Pit 1 is the big one — about 230 metres long, holding the main battle formation of infantry and chariots, more than a thousand figures excavated and thousands more still in the ground. It has the raised viewing gallery and the photograph everyone knows.
Pit 2 is smaller and more interesting archaeologically: cavalry, kneeling archers, and sections deliberately left unexcavated so you can see what the site looks like before the work is done. Several of the best individual figures are displayed in glass cases here at eye level, which is the only place you can look closely at a face.
Pit 3 is the smallest, interpreted as the command post. Around 70 figures. Ten minutes.
The Bronze Chariots Hall holds two half-scale bronze chariot-and-horse sets found near the burial mound — extraordinarily fine metalwork, and arguably the single most impressive object on the site. It has moved location within the complex over the years; check the current site map when you arrive.
Walk it in reverse
Pit 2 → Pit 3 → Bronze Chariots → Pit 1.
The reason is simple. Pit 1 is overwhelming and it flattens everything that comes after it. Seen first, the smaller pits feel like an anticlimax and most people rush them. Seen before, they set up the scale and the detail, and Pit 1 becomes the payoff rather than the opening.
You will also be walking against the crowd flow for the first hour, which at a site receiving several million visitors a year is worth something on its own.
Timing
Go at opening. The museum opens at 08:30 and the first hour is meaningfully calmer than the rest of the day. Tour coaches arrive in volume from around 10:00.
Or go late. Arriving around 14:30 in peak season gives you two and a half hours after the coach groups have thinned. Less good than early, better than midday.
Avoid 10:00 to 13:00 if you have any choice.
Allow three to four hours on site. Two is enough to see the pits and not enough to look at anything.
Avoid entirely: the first week of October, the first week of May, and Chinese New Year. This is one of the most visited sites in China and holiday crowds are extreme.
Lishan Garden, the part everyone skips
Your ticket includes the mausoleum site itself — the burial mound of Qin Shi Huang, about 1.5 km east, with a free shuttle from the pit complex.
The tomb has never been excavated. What you see is a large earthen mound, some landscaped grounds, and several smaller excavated pits of stone armour and bronze waterfowl.
It is quiet, it takes about an hour, and it is where the whole thing makes sense: the warriors were not the point, they were the garrison for this.
Most visitors leave without going. If you have the time, go.
What the site does not tell you well
Three pieces of context that the signage largely omits and that change the visit.
The figures were painted. Every warrior was finished in bright mineral pigment — reds, greens, purples, with individually coloured armour lacing and facial features. The lacquer underlayer that held the paint begins to curl and flake within minutes of exposure to air, and most of it was lost during the earliest excavations. This is a large part of why so much of the site remains deliberately unexcavated: the conservation problem has not been fully solved. The few figures where colour survives are displayed in controlled cases, and they are worth seeking out.
The faces are not portraits. The often-repeated claim that every warrior is modelled on a specific soldier is not what the evidence supports. The figures were assembled from a modular kit — a limited set of head, ear, moustache and body components combined and then finished individually by hand. The result is enormous variety produced industrially, which is arguably more interesting than the portrait story.
They were smashed. Most of the figures you see standing have been reassembled from fragments. The pits were burned and collapsed within a few years of the burial, probably during the rebellion that ended the Qin. The restoration work visible along the back of Pit 1 — trestle tables, numbered fragments, conservators — is ongoing and has been for fifty years.
Practical notes
There is a lot of walking. The site is spread out and the shuttle only covers the gap to Lishan Garden. Comfortable shoes.
The halls are enormous and unheated. Pit 1 in January is cold. Pit 1 in July is humid.
Photography is permitted in the pits. No flash. The light is poor and the viewing gallery is high — a phone will struggle for anything but the wide shot, which is fine, because the wide shot is the point.
Guides. Audio guides in multiple languages are available at the entrance and are worth taking, because the on-site English signage explains what you are looking at but not why it matters. Licensed human guides are available at the gate; agree the price and language before starting.
Food on site is limited and overpriced. Eat in Lintong or back in Xi'an.
Combine with Huaqing Palace if you have a full day — the Tang dynasty hot spring complex is on the bus 306 route and adds about two hours.
Is it worth it?
Two honest caveats.
It is not an intimate experience. You view the figures from a raised gallery at a distance, behind a barrier, along with several thousand other people. If your mental image is walking among the warriors, adjust it.
Children are often bored. Under about ten, this is three halls of statues that cannot be touched, and twenty minutes is the realistic attention span. The family itinerary guide suggests skipping it with young children, and that advice stands.
For adults with any interest in the ancient world, it earns its reputation. Eight thousand individually modelled figures, buried in 210 BC, found by farmers digging a well in 1974, and still being excavated. Pit 2's glass cases, where you can stand a metre from a kneeling archer's face, are what people remember.
Official sources
- Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site Museum: https://www.bmy.com.cn/
Admission prices, opening hours, release windows and the internal layout of the site all change. Confirm on the official channel for your date.
Last reviewed: 30 July 2026.