Yanling Mausoleum

34.4100°N, 108.6833°E.

The Yanling Mausoleum in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China — the tomb mound of Emperor Cheng of Han (Liu Ao), the twelfth emperor of the Western Han dynasty, who reigned from 33 to 7 BCE. Original base 173 metres per side; original height 30 metres. Emperor Cheng's reign was politically calamitous: the Wang family of his mother Empress Wang Zhengjun consolidated control over the central administration, the emperor himself spent his energies on the consorts Zhao Feiyan and Zhao Hede (the celebrated Flying Swallow sisters), and he died without an heir at the age of 44 — leaving the throne to a nephew and the regency to the Wangs. The mound is built of rammed earth in horizontal lifts and is one of the better-preserved Western Han imperial tombs above ground. Excavations have not penetrated the central chamber.

A pyramid for an emperor whose pleasure-house favourites are still household names in Chinese literature, in a cemetery whose contemporary court records describe it as the most expensively built tomb of its century.