Danfeng Gate has a history of more than 240 years. It was first built in the second year of Longshuo (662), Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty. When the Daming Palace was being built on a large scale, it was built on the south wall of the Daming Palace, which is the eastern section of the north wall of Chang'an City. Develop and build. After the Anshi Rebellion, the Tang army regained Chang'an from the rebels. Shortly after Tang Suzong returned to the capital, on the 27th of the first month of the third year of Zhide (758), Danfeng Gate was renamed Mingfeng Gate (some historical records also record it as Mingfeng Gate). About four years later, in May of the first year of Zong Baoying's reign in the Tang Dynasty (762), the old name of Danfeng Gate was restored.
Danfeng Gate is the main entrance of Daming Palace. There are clear records in historical records about the construction time of Daming Palace. However, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the construction time of Danfeng Gate for a long time. . Many scholars speculate that Danfeng Gate was built during the Longshuo period of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty (661~663). However, Gao Benxian, the former director of the Daming Palace Ruins Preservation Office, believes that the Danfeng Gate should have been built in the late Zhenguan years of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. "Jade Sea" records that in October of the 20th year of Zhenguan (646), Sikong Fangxuanling and Yan Lide, the general's great craftsman, built the "Xiandao Gate" in the north gate of Daying. Among them, "Bei Que" refers to Daming Palace, and "Xiandao Gate" refers to Danfeng Gate and the tower above it. After this construction, Daming Palace became Li Shimin's residence in his later years. In the second year of Longshuo (662), Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, Daming Palace was renamed Penglai Palace, and the halls, gates, etc. were renamed. Xiandao Gate was called Danfeng Gate.
One day in March of the 23rd year of Emperor Taizong’s reign (649), Li Shimin came to Danfengmen (called Xiandaomen at that time) regardless of his illness, faced the people of Chang’an, and announced an edict granting amnesty to the world. It was the first time that the emperor held a major event at Danfengmen.
In April of the third year of Longshuo, Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty (663), Emperor Gaozong Li Zhi moved from Taiji Palace to Daming Palace to listen to politics. After that, the center of political activities in the Tang Dynasty moved to Daming Palace. As the main south gate of Daming Palace, Danfeng Gate naturally became the "national gate" of the Tang Dynasty people.
Danfeng Gate is not only the gate for the emperor and courtiers to enter and exit the Daming Palace, but also an important place for holding various activities and ceremonies in the Tang Dynasty. It is similar in nature to the Chengtian Gate, the main entrance of the Taichi Palace, and has the etiquette of the palace. importance. But until Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, according to tradition, edicts of amnesty and reform were mostly issued at Chengtian Gate of Taiji Palace. After Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty came to the throne, he mostly lived and listened to the government in Xingqing Palace, which was converted from his original vassal palace, which is the so-called "South Nei". He only often went to the "East Nei" Daming Palace for entertainment and banquets, but the imperial palace still used the Daming Palace.
In March of the seventh year of Kaiyuan (719), Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty hosted a banquet for Turkic leaders at Danfeng Tower.
In April of the ninth year of Kaiyuan (721), Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty held an examination in Hanyuan Hall and ordered officials to provide food for the candidates. In September of the same year, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty held a banquet in the Danfeng Gate Tower to entertain the Turkic leaders.
In the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan (730), envoys from the Shisulu tribe of the Western Turks came to the Tang Dynasty. Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty hosted a banquet in the Danfeng Gate Tower and invited the envoys from the Eastern Turks who had previously arrived in Chang'an*** Went to a banquet together, but unexpectedly, a diplomatic conflict almost occurred during the dinner. The two envoys had a dispute over the seats. The Turkic envoy believed that Tuqishi was a small country and was originally a minister of the Turks, so he could not sit in the upper seat; while the Tuqishi envoy said that the banquet that day was for him and he could not sit at the bottom. . Finally, after consultation with Tang Dynasty officials, two seats were set up, with the Turkic envoys sitting on the east seat and the Turkic envoys sitting on the west seat. This settled the dispute.
After the Anshi Rebellion, Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty sat in the Daming Palace to listen to politics. From then on, edicts on amnesty and reform of the Yuan Dynasty were issued at Danfengmen.
In February of the third year of Zhide (758), Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty conferred the emblem of the Supreme Emperor "Xuanzong" in the Xingqing Palace, and then announced a general amnesty for the world at the tower of Danfeng Gate (then known as Mingfeng Gate), and changed the The third year of Zhide was the first year of Qianyuan.
One of the most important functions of Danfeng Gate is the place where pardons are announced. There is a tower built on the Danfeng Gate, which is called the Danfeng Tower. After Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty, whenever there was a general amnesty, a grand "Golden Rooster Release Prisoner" ceremony was often held in the Danfeng Tower. Every pardon day, the guards under the Ministry of Punishment of Shangshu Province would set up a golden rooster on a high pole in the south of the Danfeng Gate Tower, with drums on one side. The people of Chang'an would gather in the square in front of the gate. After the emperor ascended the tower, the prisoners would be executed amidst the sound of drums. They led him to Danfeng Gate, read out the pardon order, and released the prisoners on the spot. According to incomplete statistics, in about 130 years from Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty to Emperor Xizong of the Tang Dynasty, more than 100 pardon ceremonies were held at Danfengmen. This was a major ceremony where the people of Chang'an could witness the emperor with their own eyes and feel the emperor's grace. Therefore, Tang poetry There are many poems describing such scenes. Wang Jian, a poet of the Tang Dynasty, wrote in "Gong Ci": "A pole was set up in front of the building to watch the announcement of pardon, and the long live shouts were heard and the dances were performed. The colorful plate was a hundred feet high when the sun shone, and the flying immortals competed to get the golden rooster."
In addition to the amnesty, on September 26, the first year of Baoying's reign (762), Emperor Daizong of the Tang Dynasty also held a large-scale military parade ceremony called "Grand Parade of Horses" at Danfeng Gate.
Starting from Emperor Suzong of the Tang Dynasty, the Tang Empire held major ceremonies such as Yuan Dynasty and amnesty at Danfeng Gate. Until Xizong of Tang Dynasty at the end of the Tang Dynasty more than a hundred years later, the Daming Palace was destroyed by wars again and again, leaving the Daming Palace in dilapidated condition. , Tang Xizong became the last emperor to issue an amnesty and reform the Yuan Dynasty at Yudanfengmenlou. In July of the fourteenth year of Xiantong (873), after Tang Yizong died, Tang Xizong ascended the throne. In November of the following year, he followed the custom and worshiped the Queen of Heaven in the southern suburbs. He climbed to the Danfeng Tower to offer amnesty to the world and announced the change of Yuan Dynasty to "Qian Fu".
There is no clear record of the destruction date of Danfeng Gate in historical records. It is speculated that it should be consistent with the last abandonment time of Daming Palace. The archaeological excavation of Danfeng Gate site in 2005 and 2006 also proved that Danfeng Gate was destroyed by fire.
At the end of the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Wen, the envoy of Xuanwu Jiedu, attempted to usurp the throne and demolished the entire city of Chang'an, and the Danfeng Gate was also destroyed.
After the fall of the Tang Empire, the city of Chang'an was downsized, the Daming Palace was reduced to ruins, and the ruins of Danfengmen were exposed in the countryside for a long time. Chang'an City suffered great damage due to the war. Han Jian, the governor of the Youguo Army stationed in Chang'an, rebuilt the city because it was too big to defend. During the reconstruction, the outer city and palace city of Chang'an City were abandoned, and only the imperial city was renovated. The three gates of Zhuque, Anfu and Yanxi of the imperial city were closed, and the Xuanwu Gate was opened in the north for defense. Since then, Danfengmen has been completely abandoned. After the liberation of Xi'an in 1949, the clinic located on the Danfengmen site was nationalized and gradually developed into the Sixth Hospital of Xi'an. Under the joint management of the hospital and the cultural relics department, this important site was preserved.
In 1961, the Daming Palace ruins were announced by the State Council as a national key cultural relics protection unit.
In October 2010, Danfeng Gate was officially completed and opened to the outside world. The interior is set up with a multimedia display of Daming Palace and Danfeng Gate on the first floor, a cultural relic display area of ??Daming Palace on the east side of the second floor, and a viewing platform for the Danfeng Gate ruins on the west side. Danfeng Gate is the south gate of the Daming Palace of the Tang Dynasty. It is a five-door palace gate with the highest system of gate construction in ancient Chinese capitals.
The city gate pier is 74.50 meters long from east to west and 33 meters wide from north to south. It is made of rammed loess and covered with bricks. There are 54-meter-long horse paths built along the city walls on both sides.
There is a wooden tower on the pier. The base of the tower located on the top of the pier is 70.82 meters long from east to west. Danfeng Gate is not only the south gate of Daming Palace, but also the north gate of Chang'an Waiguo City. Danfeng Gate faces Hanyuan Hall to the north, and there is an imperial road more than 600 meters long between the two. "Chang'an Chronicles" Volume 6 records: "There are more than 400 steps from Hanyuan Palace to Danfeng Gate in the south, and there is no gap in between."
The east and west are connected to the south wall of the Daming Palace (the north wall of Chang'an City), and Jianfu is in the west. Gate, east facing the Immortal Gate.
In addition to the east-west street along the north wall of Chang'an City, there is also a north-south street opened with the construction of Danfeng Gate on the south side, which is "one hundred and twenty steps" wide, equivalent to 176 meters, which is 176 meters wider than Chang'an City. The 150-meter-wide Zhuque Street, the central axis of the city, is much wider and has become the widest road in Chang'an City.
There were originally two squares, Yishan and Yongchang, outside Danfeng Gate. During the Longshuo period of Emperor Gaozong of the Tang Dynasty, in order to expand the main street outside Danfeng Gate, the two large squares were opened into four small squares, forming a There are four squares: Guangzhai, Yongchang, Yishan and Laiting. The northwest is called Guangzhaifang, the southwest is called Yongchangfang, the northeast is called Yishanfang, and the southeast is called Laitingfang. Since Danfengmen Street passes through the original Guangzhai Yongchang Second Lane, it is not in the middle street of the square but to the east. Therefore, among the four reconstructed small lanes, the northwest and southwest second lanes are slightly larger, and the northeast and southeast second lanes are slightly larger. Small. As a result, a "T"-shaped square was formed outside Danfeng Gate. The Danfeng Gate original restoration plan comes from "Daming Palace" written by Yang Hongxun, an expert in architectural archeology at the Institute of Archeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and published by Science Press in 2013.
Rammed earth pier
The outer outline of the city gate pier of Danfeng Gate and its complete dimensions after being covered with bricks are: 74.50 meters long from east to west and 33 meters wide from north to south. Converted to the Tang ruler, one foot = 0.294 meters, its length is Tang ruler twenty-five feet three feet, and its width is eleven feet two feet. The pier contains five doorways, and the net width of each doorway is 8.50 meters, that is, Tang ruler two feet nine. Chi; the partition wall between the doorways, plus the forked columns on both walls, has a total thickness of 3.80 meters, or one foot and three feet.
Height of the pier and abutment: The Konoe version of "Six Codes of the Tang Dynasty" records that the height of Chang'an Luocheng was one foot and eight feet, or about 5.3 meters. From the materials provided by the murals in the Tang Grotto Temple, we know that the height of the city gate pier and abutment is It is equal to the height of the city wall plus the battlements. The battlements are the bunkers used by soldiers to shoot arrows during wars. They need to be higher than or slightly equal to the height of the human body. The city system stipulates that the battlements are seven feet high, which is a little more than 2 meters. The height of the city wall is two feet and five feet in the Tang Dynasty, or about 7.35 meters. This is also the Ming Dynasty. The height of the Demen pier is above the level of the wooden structure's flat seat. The palace wall of Daming Palace is higher than Guocheng, and the height together with the battlements is about 9 meters, which is also the height of the Danfeng Gate pier. The battlements shown in the murals of the Tang Grotto Temple in Dunhuang are mostly in the shape of "convex" or a two-level "convex" shape. The wall area of ??the city gate pier is the same as that of the city wall. From the pre-Qin to the Song and Yuan dynasties, the city walls were basically made of earth without bricks (some areas were built with stone), so they were larger than the brick cities after the Ming Dynasty. The Song Dynasty's "Building French Style" summarizes the city system, and the score for the city wall is four to one. Although the city gate piers are covered with bricks, they are still the same as the city walls. Sloped city bricks were unearthed from city gate sites such as Danfeng Gate and Mingde Gate. They were used to build piers and abutments. The tapered walls form a very elegant plane (no small steps of wrong bricks). The use of these sloped bricks A bevel on each brick also proves that the city wall is closed by four points.
The doorway is made of wooden structure. There are rows of forked columns on both sides of the doorway. The row of forked columns of Mingde Gate is fifteen on each side. The doorway of Danfeng Gate is longer. 33 meters. The remains show that there were originally twenty forked columns on each side, with a square stone foundation of 70~75 cm
Two meters south of the center of each doorway, opposite to the ninth forked column from the south, there are remains of a 50-centimeter-high threshold, indicating that the threshold is wooden, 50 centimeters high and 24 centimeters wide; there are vertical cheeks at both ends of the wooden threshold. The stone and door anvil stone are all made of bluestone, with plain and smooth surfaces. The standing cheek stones are carved with grooves for inserting wooden thresholds.
The forked pillar pits on both sides of the doorway reflect that the original stone foundation was about 65 to 70 centimeters square, so the pillars should be about 60 centimeters square. The structure of the doorway is: cross beams are erected on the tops of forked columns, and densely arranged corrugated wood is installed on the beams, that is, large beams. The original city gate method should be to fill the beams with soil and compact them to reach the required height. Later, the city gate method was improved. In order to reduce the load of rammed earth, short columns were erected on the beams and supported by diagonal braces. Short beams were set up on the short columns, and secret rows of corrugated wood were set up on the short beams. Support the thick plate to form a trapezoidal frame, and ram the soil on top. The trapezoidal structure can increase its load-bearing performance; this creates a trapezoidal space below and also reduces the volume of rammed earth. From the perspective of the city gate facade, the upper part of the doorway has a trapezoidal outline. On the top of such a city gate pier, a layer of ballast stones is built, and then a wooden flat seat and a building above are built. The construction of city gates in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, all the particular specifications were already in this shape. The shapes of the Tang and Song Dynasties are basically the same, with only slight differences in architectural styles. Therefore, the image materials of Song Dynasty city gates can be used as a reference for restoration research.
The Dunhuang Grottoes have the image of the main entrance of the palace with five doors painted on the north wall of Cave 138 in the late Tang Dynasty. What is particularly noteworthy about this picture is that in addition to the piers and abutments showing bricks, the city walls on both sides are painted with rhombus patterns. The author, Mr. Yang Hongxun, believes that this is not an arbitrary decorative pattern for the sake of beautiful appearance, but a measure taken to protect the rammed earth wall from rain - the use of patterned square bricks as a veneer. There are many such portrayals in Dunhuang Tang murals: such as the north wall of Cave 171 in the High Tang Dynasty, the east wall of Cave 159 in the Middle Tang Dynasty, the north wall of Cave 9 in the Late Tang Dynasty, the north wall of Cave 138 in the Late Tang Dynasty, and the west wall of Cave 85 in the Late Tang Dynasty. On the slopes, there are descriptions of city gate piers or city walls with patterned square bricks.
The use of these five doorways is the same as that of the three-door city gate. The middle doorway leads directly to Tianzichi Road, which is exclusively for the emperor's passage and is usually closed. Existing documents can be examined, at least this was the system in the Han Dynasty. No one is allowed to pass on Tianzi Chi Road, even if there are cross roads, no one can cross it. If you want to go from one side of the Chi Road to the other, you must follow the side road and exit the city from one side of the three doorways, and then enter from the doorway on the other side of the Chi Road in the middle. Even the prince is the same. How to use the doorways on both sides of the Five Door Road? In the prosperous capital of the Tang Dynasty, there were traffic rules. All capital gates and palace gates were "left in and right out", similar to the modern "right side" traffic rules.
Wood Structure Tower
The Danfeng Gate Tower - Danfeng Tower, its wooden structure tower is the essence of this palace gate. Because the palace gate is so large, the pier and platform are 74.50 meters long from east to west. Calculated based on the height of four to one, the top of the platform is also 70.82 meters long from east to west, which is about 24 feet long. This is approximately the east-west length of the base of Danfeng Tower. The rammed earth main steps of Zhengya Hanyuan Hall are about 60 meters long from east to west, and the wooden auxiliary steps are only 67.64 meters. The east-to-west length of the base of Danfeng Tower is 70.82 meters, and a wooden structure flat seat is slightly protruding above it. The width of the gate tower is still basically 70.82 meters, which is larger than the main hall, Hanyuan Hall, which violates the palace regulations. Therefore, the Danfeng Tower must be broken into parts to make a palace shorter than the Hanyuan Hall, and with the addition of shelters (houses) on the left and right sides, it is possible to achieve a combined body shape of 70.82 meters. This architectural combination and Dunhuang murals provide us with evidence. For example: the city view of "No Resentment" on the south wall of Cave 172 in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, the city view of "Laodu Cha Dou Sheng Bian" on the south wall of Cave 9 in the late Tang Dynasty, the murals in Cave 138 in the late Tang Dynasty and the murals in Cave 196 in the late Tang Dynasty city ??view. The city view in the murals of Cave 85 in the late Tang Dynasty all depicts a combined city view form in which a wooden structure cantilevers a circle of flat seats on the city gate pier, and the flat seats are built with two ends of the city view. In particular, the image of the main entrance of the Tusita Celestial Palace depicted in Cave 138 is particularly noteworthy. The shape of the five doorways is painted to express the majesty and grandeur of the Celestial Palace. In particular, the life prototype of the main gate of the palace city on which the portrayal is based should be the Danfeng Gate with five doorways from the Daming Palace.
It is speculated that the main body of the Danfeng Tower City View is nine rooms, with two shelter rooms on both sides, totaling thirteen rooms. In the city gate tower shown in the mural of Cave 138 in the late Tang Dynasty in Dunhuang, the roof of the main tower and the sandwich roof are both of the four-note type. In Tang Dynasty buildings, the open rooms were not enlarged, and each room was set to 5.20 meters, so thirteen The distance is about 68 meters, which is Tang ruler twenty-three feet per foot. The width of the deep room is set to 4.50 meters, the width of the fifth room is 22.50 meters, and the width is 7 feet, 6 feet and 5 inches.
Referring to the clearer roof organizational relationships in Cave 9, Cave 172, and Cave 196 of the Tang Dynasty in Dunhuang, the roof ridge is sandwiched under the main eaves. For the specific conditions of the building, please refer to the restoration of the image-level Japanese Horyu Temple Golden Hall and the Song-style gate tower of the Big Wild Goose Pagoda's lintel stone carvings in the same period. According to the murals in Dunhuang Cave 138, a vase and fire beads are decorated in the center of the main spine.
According to the main hall of Foguang Temple in the Tang Dynasty, the height of the center column should be equal to the width of the face, which should be 5.45 meters. As the pillars arise, the heights of the pillars at each end increase in proportional progression. The maximum column diameter at the lower 1/3 of the shuttle column may reach 60 cm. The column base is based on the stone base circle with lotus unearthed from the site of Renshou Palace in the Sui Dynasty. The lotus cover is 12 centimeters high. The paving design refers to the Golden Hall of Horyuji Temple in Japan and the main hall of Foguang Temple in Wutai Mountain. It is set to be a double-copying single-story building and a six-story pavilion.
The eaves protrusion is set to 420 cm, and the rise and fall are each 50 cm. The materials used for the large wooden structure of the main building should be the so-called "first-class materials" in the Song Dynasty's "Building Methods": 2 centimeters are divided into 1 point, single wood is 20 cm x 30 cm, and full wood is 20 cm x 42 cm. The flat seats on the floor are not blocked by the fins, and the thickened floor cross-section is exposed on the facade, and the corners are spliced ??at 45°.
The city gate pier is equipped with wooden flat seats and railings, and on the top of the platform is a flat wooden platform for the main building and a masonry step base. The level of the main building is about one foot and two feet high, that is, about 3.50 meters; the base of the shelter steps is as low as one foot, that is, about 0.294 meters. Since there is only about 1 meter width between the north and south sides of the pig trotters of Louguan and the railings of the city platform, there are no steps on the north and south sides. There are steps on both sides of the east and west folders; after entering the folder, there are wooden steps directly facing the main city view.
The above is an inference based on the image of the five-door palace gate in the mural of Dunhuang Cave 138.
The towers on both sides
The city walls on both sides of the city gate in the mural painting of Cave 138 in Dunhuang are connected with opposing towers as a foil. This is a legacy of the "city towers" of the Northern and Southern Dynasties. Daxing City in the Sui Dynasty was built at the end of the Northern Dynasty, and the Mingde Gate (Sun Gate) should also have this shape. From 1997 to 1999, the Dingding Gate site, the south gate of the central axis of Luoyang City, the eastern capital of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, was excavated by the Institute of Archeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Luoyang Municipal Cultural Relics Team. The ruins of the tower pier on the west side of the city gate pier still remain at the gate site of the Sui Dynasty, and the east side is also vaguely identifiable. The que tower is 16 meters from east to west, the Nabei is 12 meters away, and it is 28 meters away from the city gate pier. The shape of the main entrance of the "Eastern Capital" of the Sui and Tang Dynasties provides strong evidence that the Danfeng Gate, the main entrance of the palace city as the capital, must also have double gates.
The planning and design of the eastern and western capitals of the Sui Dynasty were all specifically presided over by Yu Wenkai. The city walls and gate shapes of the two capitals were basically the same, except that Luoyang City, as the companion capital, had a slightly lower status than the capital Daxing. Just wait. The Dingding Gate at the front of the central axis of Luoyang City is equivalent to the Mingde Gate in Daxing in the Sui Dynasty, but it was lowered by one level and made into three gates. It is worth noting that it is equipped with two opposing towers, so the Mingde Gate, which has a higher standard than it, needs to have two towers as a foil. Although the Mingde Gate has not been excavated, the image of the five-door city gate shown in the mural of Cave 138 in Dunhuang, and with the evidence from the Dingding Gate site, it can be said with certainty that the Mingde Gate must have had double gates. As the main entrance of Daming Palace in the palace city, Danfeng Gate should be based on the shape of Mingde Gate, the main gate of the capital, and should also have towers on both sides.
As for the location of the double gates of Danfeng Gate, you can speculate with reference to Dingding Gate:
The Dingding Gate gate is 28 meters away from the gate, which is nine feet and five feet. In view of the fact that Danfeng Gate is It is much larger than Dingding Gate. It is temporarily slightly larger than 64 meters and can accommodate the length of Danfeng Gate, which is 54 meters long.
As for the shape of the tower, it is restored from north to south as shown in the murals. The mural shows that the main building and the piers of the double towers are all covered with bricks. The north and south sides of the Danfeng Gate Tower are set to 19.50 meters, about six feet and six feet; the east-west width of the tower is set to 13.50 meters, or four feet and six feet. The platform is also divided into four points and one is divided into high points. The top surface of the platform is about 15 meters by 9 meters. Then the floor plan can be three rooms x five rooms, with a room width of 3 meters, that is, 9 meters x 15 meters. The mural depicts the five-door city gate tower as being three bays wide and two bays deep. This only indicates that it is rectangular and does not represent the actual situation. The roof is of a four-note type with the sides facing forward. This should reflect the actual situation, that is, the two views face each other and face the main building view. The side of the Que Building facing the main building has five bays, and the column height is equal to the bay width; the paving is one level smaller than that of the main building.