Anling Mausoleum

34.4217°N, 108.8533°E.

The Anling Mausoleum in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China — the tomb mound of Emperor Hui of Han (Liu Ying), the second emperor of the Western Han dynasty, who reigned from 195 to 188 BCE. Original base 165 metres per side; original height 25 metres. Emperor Hui was the only legitimate son of the dynasty's founder Liu Bang and Empress Lü Zhi; his short and miserable reign was dominated by his mother, who had already executed his half-brother Liu Ruyi and mutilated Ruyi's mother Lady Qi (the Han Human Swine episode recorded in Sima Qian's history) on the day of his accession. Hui died at the age of twenty-three, possibly of grief and shock at his mother's atrocities. The mound is built of rammed earth in horizontal lifts and was the first imperial pyramid built to the developed Han template that subsequent dynasty members would copy.

A pyramid for an emperor who was effectively a prisoner of his mother for the entirety of his reign, in a cemetery that established the architectural pattern for the next four hundred years of Han imperial burial.