Hangzhou may have been the world's largest medieval city
Zhejiang's capital at the Grand Canal's southern end and Hangzhou Bay is one of China's Eight Ancient Capitals, framed by West Lake. From 1180 to 1315, and again 1348 to 1358, many historians rank it the globe's biggest city—Southern Song Lin'an after Kaifeng fell.
Neolithic Hemudu farmers grew rice some seven thousand years ago southeast of the city; Liangzhu jade culture thrived nearby five millennia ago. Qin set Qiantang County in 222 BC; Sui made Hang prefectural seat in 589 and walled it two years later, completing the Grand Canal's full length by 609. Tang poet-governor Bai Juyi rebuilt West Lake dikes; in 1089 Su Shi dredged mud into a 2.8-kilometre causeway. Wuyue kings (907–978) patronized Buddhist art before Southern Song emperors settled here in 1132 after Jurchen conquest of the north.
Lin'an walls rose thirty feet high and ten thick, with thirteen gates across four miles north–south yet only one mile east–west. Arab merchants and a Persian-built Phoenix Mosque marked oceanic trade. Britannica cites over two million residents; Jacques Gernet estimated well over one million by 1276, while a 1270 census listed 186,330 families, likely undercounting soldiers and sojourners. Wooden density brought catastrophic fires—1208 alone burned 58,097 houses over four days—answered with rented water-ringed warehouses, watchtowers, signal flags, and more than three thousand fire soldiers.
Kublai Khan's Mongols took the city in 1276 yet spared Zhao royals, unlike Jurchen massacres at Kaifeng. Marco Polo and Odoric of Pordenone later called it the world's greatest emporium. Today Hangzhou holds three UNESCO sites—West Lake, the Grand Canal, and Liangzhu ruins—hosts Alibaba, Ant, NetEase, Geely, and DeepSeek, ranks high on innovation and Nature Index science output, and still trades on the lake poets once diked against drought.
Source: Hangzhou
