Weiling Mausoleum

34.4267°N, 108.7167°E.

The Weiling Mausoleum in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China — the tomb mound of Emperor Yuan of Han (Liu Shi), the eleventh emperor of the Western Han dynasty, who reigned from 49 to 33 BCE. Original base 120 metres per side; original height 25.4 metres. Emperor Yuan's reign marks the beginning of the long political decline of the Western Han: he favoured Confucian advisors at the expense of the military aristocracy that had founded and sustained the dynasty, and his weakening of central authority allowed the rise of the Wang family — the maternal line of his successor's empress — that would within sixty years overthrow the Western Han under the usurper Wang Mang. The mound is built of rammed earth in horizontal lifts to the standard Han template. The cemetery includes the satellite tomb of Empress Wang Zhengjun, who lived to 84 and was the aunt of Wang Mang.

A pyramid for the emperor whose policies allowed the family that overthrew his dynasty to take root at court — and whose widow signed the abdication that ended the Western Han.