Beijing Dingling Ruins is located at the foot of Dayu Mountain, 40 kilometers north of the center of Beijing. It has been built as a special museum for the site. Dingling Mausoleum was built from the 12th to the 18th year of Wanli in the Ming Dynasty (1584-1590), covering an area of ??180,000 square meters. It is the joint tomb of Zhu Yijun, the Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and the two empresses Xiaoduan and Xiaojing. The main building consists of two parts: above ground and underground. The above-ground buildings are composed of stone bridges, stele pavilions, palace gates, Bei'en Gate, En Palace, Fangcheng Minglou and Baocheng; the underground buildings are composed of five interconnected stone structure arched halls called Xuan Palace, commonly known as the "Underground Palace" ".
In October 1955, Guo Moruo, Shen Yanbing, Wu Han, Deng Tuo, Fan Wenlan and others applied to excavate Dingling. In early December of that year, six founders and Xia Nai were established under the chairmanship of Wu Han. The "Dingling Excavation Committee" composed of , Zheng Zhenduo and Wang Kunlun. Zhao Qichang, who graduated from the Department of History and Archeology of Peking University, served as the leader of the excavation team. On May 19, 1956, with the approval of the State Council, the first planned scientific excavation of ancient imperial tombs using archaeological methods began. On May 19, 1957, after a year of many twists and turns and arduous excavations, the entrance diamond wall of the Dingling Underground Xuan Palace was revealed to the excavation team. On October 5, the excavation team entered the underground palace. The mysterious underground palace of ancient Chinese emperors was finally revealed to the light, and nearly 3,000 cultural relics were unearthed. On September 30, 1959, a museum was established on the original site of Dingling. Guo Moruo inscribed the name "Dingling Museum" and it was officially opened to the public on October 1, 1959.
The Dingling Underground Palace is the only underground palace that has been excavated among the Ming Tombs. Its underground palace is entirely made of stone, mostly bluestone, with an area of ??1,195 square meters. There is no beam inside, it is a stone arch, which is quite tall. There are seven 4-ton white marble stone doors in the underground palace, which are ingeniously designed and can be opened and closed flexibly. The underground palace is divided into main hall, side hall and front hall, which are exactly the same as the above-ground buildings. The sacrificial vessels are displayed in their original state in the middle hall. There are three white marble pedestals there. In front of each pedestal there is a set of five yellow glazed offerings and a large blue and white porcelain vat. The vat was originally filled with lamp oil for lighting the lamp. The coffins of Emperor Wanli of the Ming Dynasty and his two queens were placed on the coffin bed in the apse. Next to the coffins were 26 red-painted wooden boxes filled with funerary objects. After the excavation of Dingling, the relevant departments identified the remains and hair of Emperor Wanli and concluded that Wanli had a hunchbacked upper body shape, a length of 1.64 meters, and a blood type of AB. During the "Cultural Revolution", the bones of Emperor Wanli and his two empresses, which were kept in the Dingling Museum, were publicly criticized and then burned in the square in front of Dingling Gate.
The Dingling Tombs of the Ming Dynasty, with their exquisite and majestic architecture, are the crown jewels of all imperial tombs in China. Now they have become a world-famous tourist attraction. The large number of precious cultural relics unearthed in Dingling have enabled archaeologists to master a lot of first-hand information, which has attracted the attention of the archaeological community at home and abroad and the descendants of Yan and Huang. However, due to various reasons, many cultural relics were not completely preserved, and the relevant excavation report was not completed until more than 30 years later.