About 700,000 workers from every province of the empire toiled unceasingly until the death of the emperor in order to construct a subterranean city within a gigantic mound. The place was a veritable scale model of the palace, the empire and the world. Its treasures were safeguarded by automatically triggered weapons designed to thwart tomb robbers.
After Qin Shi Huang's death, the principal craftsmen of the hypogeum were walled up on the orders of the second emperor, as a precaution against their betraying their secrets. The mausoleum, 35 km from Xian, is still landmarked by an imposing mound 43 m high. The interior is built within a first square enclosure, with doors in the middle of each of the four walls corresponding to the four cardinal points. This in turn is surrounded by a second rectangular enclosure running north-south.
The mausoleum's superstructures have disappeared and there remains only a wooded knoll resembling a truncated pyramid on a 350 m square base. While sinking a well 1.5 km from the exterior eastern wall of the mausoleum's inner room, three peasants from the small village of Yangeun-West came upon a pit in which there were lifesize terracotta statues of warriors. Excavations were begun immediately. Pit 1 contained a veritable army of 1,087 warriors, the infantry and cavalry corps standing in battle formation with archers protecting the flanks. Today it is estimated that there are a potential 6,000 statues of warriors and horses in that one pit alone, which has floored galleries 230 m long. It is now entirely enclosed by the site museum.
Two other pits were discovered just north of Pit 1 and were found to contain similar items - 1,500 warriors, carts and horses in Pit 2, and 68 officers and dignitaries and a cart with four horses in Pit 3. These pits were provisionally backfilled and the objects extracted from them displayed in exhibition rooms flanking the north and south ends of the great hall of the site museum. Other finds were made on the western slope of the mound; these included notably two half-life-size cast bronze quadrigae.
According to current estimates, the statue army of the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum must have represented the exact number of the imperial guards. Over the past thirteen years, discoveries have revealed the dimensions of the mausoleum, and the site constitutes one of the most fabulous archaeological reserves in the world.