Famous Landmarks in Guangzhou
A 2,200-year river port where Qing clan halls sit minutes from a 600-metre steel tower.
Guangzhou's landmarks span more than a century of building on the Pearl River delta. In the old city centre, the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall preserves a Qing-dynasty academic complex of nineteen buildings, its brick and timber halls carved and decorated in the southern Chinese style. A few kilometres away, the octagonal Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, raised in traditional Chinese form during the late 1920s, marks the Republican era with a pillar-free span of 71 metres. Across the Pearl River in Haizhu District stands the city's newest layer: the Canton Tower, a 600-metre lattice-steel structure completed for the 2010 Asian Games, its twisted hourglass profile now the skyline's most recognisable shape.
Canton Tower
2010 · Information Based Architecture
A slender steel tower whose latticework is pinched into a twisted hourglass silhouette, widening again near the top where a ring of observation decks encircles the shaft before a slim spire completes the height.
A 600-metre multipurpose observation tower in Haizhu District, topped out in 2009 and opened on 29 September 2010 in time for the Asian Games held that year. Designed by Information Based Architecture, its hyperboloid lattice-steel shell briefly made it the tallest tower in the world, overtaking Toronto's CN Tower before Tokyo's Skytree surpassed it. It was mainland China's tallest structure until the Shanghai Tower topped out in 2013, and remains the country's second-tallest tower and the fifth-tallest freestanding structure worldwide.
- Briefly held the title of world's tallest tower, overtaking Toronto's CN Tower before Tokyo Skytree surpassed it.
- Remained mainland China's tallest structure until the Shanghai Tower topped out in 2013.
Photo: Josephua (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Chen Clan Ancestral Hall
1894
A symmetrical walled complex of nineteen buildings arranged around nine halls and six courtyards, its brick and timber halls dense with carved wood, stone and pottery ornament in the southern Chinese decorative style.
Built in 1894 by 72 branches of the Chen clan to house descendants preparing for the imperial examinations, the complex later became the Chen Clan's Industry College and then a series of middle schools before its conversion into the Guangdong Folk Art Museum. Its nineteen buildings are arranged symmetrically along a north–south axis around nine halls and six courtyards, and hold a large collection of wood carvings and pottery. The complex was placed on the national list of protected cultural relics in 1988.
- Funded jointly by 72 branches of the Chen clan rather than by a single patron.
- Has served in turn as an exam-prep hall, an industrial college and a middle school before becoming today's folk art museum.
Photo: Zhangzhugang (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall
1931 · Lü Yanzhi
An octagonal hall built in traditional Chinese architectural style, its 71-metre span crossing without a single interior pillar to give the auditorium inside room for more than three thousand seats.
Designed by Lü Yanzhi, who died in 1929 before the building was finished, this octagonal hall was raised with donations from local and overseas Chinese communities in memory of Sun Yat-sen. Construction ran from 1929 to 1931. The structure spans 71 metres without a single interior pillar and holds a stage with seating for 3,240 people, and it stands within an urban park that today also serves as a convention venue.
- Its architect, Lü Yanzhi, died in 1929, the year construction began, and never saw the hall completed.
Photo: Wikiwakhan (CC0)
History
Guangzhou has traded on the Pearl River for more than 2,200 years, growing wealthy as a terminus of the Silk Road and, for long stretches, the only Chinese port open to European merchants. That mercantile wealth funded the clan institutions of the late imperial period: the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, completed in 1894, was built jointly by 72 branches of one family to house students preparing for the imperial examinations. The early twentieth century brought a different kind of monument, as local and overseas Chinese communities raised funds for the octagonal Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, completed in 1931 after the fall of the Qing dynasty. The more recent skyline reflects the city's role as a regional hub: the Canton Tower rose on the Pearl River's southern bank in 2010, built for the Asian Games and briefly the tallest tower on Earth.