Nanjing’s famed City Wall has been treated to a dose of high tech recently, with computer-assisted analysis revealing new data as to the Wall and its makeup, determined for the very first time and released to the public.
It’s one of our city’s attractions which most visitors to Nanjing shall first enjoy. That’s for many good reasons, of course, but top among them is the fact it remains the longest and best-preserved city wall in the world, longer than that in Beijing and, yes, longer that that in Paris.
As Nanjing Daily reports, our fine City Wall at present has a length of 22,728.98 metres, but that’s far from its most interesting statistic.
For that, we have to thank 21st Century technology. For the Nanjing City Wall Protection and Management Centre has now completed its “Nanjing City Wall ‘One Map’ Cultural Heritage Digital Archive System”.
To do so, experts employed 3D-laser scanning and tilt-shift photography to map, scan, archive and build a database of the our Wall.
The techniques also made use of Building Information Modelling (BIM). According to Autodesk, a world leader in 3D-computer animation, BIM is “the holistic process of creating and managing information for a built asset. Based on an intelligent model and enabled by a cloud platform, BIM integrates structured, multi-disciplinary data to produce a digital representation of an asset across its lifecycle, from planning and design to construction and operations”.
For the record then, the Nanjing City Wall is at its highest in the section from Taiping Men to Fugui Shan, at a staggering 67.07 metres.
On the other hand, the Wall is at its lowest along the section from the Lulong Scenic Spot to Dinghuai Men, where it is just 11.97-metres high.
As to its breadth, the Nanjing City Wall is 19.23-metres wide in the section from Jiqing Men to the Dongshui Sluice.
Saving the thinnest for last, the Wall of which we are all so-rightfully proud is at its narrowest, again in the section from the Lulong Scenic Spot to Dinghuai Men, at 0.97 metres. Meaning you can touch both sides of the Wall at once and hold nigh-on 700 years of history in your hands.