At the top of the list of "historical ancient capitals", there are only these 9 cities

Historically, 217 cities have become the capitals of one or N dynasties or regimes, while only 9 cities are at the head

In the long history of China, there have been many dynasties and regime changes, and many capitals have also appeared. These capitals may belong to the capital of a unified dynasty, or they may be the capital of a divided dynasty, a minority regime, and a peasant uprising regime, all of which belong to the capital in a broad sense, according to statistics, a total of 217 cities in the country have been the capitals of one or N dynasties and regimes.

Corresponding to the ancient capital city in the broad sense, it is the narrow ancient capital city, and the criterion for its identification is that on the basis of the generalized ancient capital city, the difficulty coefficient is increased, one is that it must be a capital city established by an independent dynasty; the second is that the capital has been built for a long time; and the third is that the geographical location is relatively certain rather than presumptive. Out of 217 cities, 65 cities were again screened.

As for the concept of "great ancient capital", it appeared in the twenties of the last century, and its identification criteria were also constantly adjusted and improved, and the selected cities went through several twists and turns, and finally formed the "four ancient capitals" composed of four cities: Xi'an, Luoyang, Nanjing and Beijing.

With the passage of time, the "Five Ancient Capitals", "Six Ancient Capitals", "Seven Ancient Capitals" and "Eight Ancient Capitals" were derived from the back, until September 2010, the Chinese Ancient Capital Society held an annual meeting in Datong, at which the "Datong Declaration" was issued, identifying Datong as one of the "Great Ancient Capitals" of China, which was said to be the "Nine Ancient Capitals".

In other words, there were 217 cities that were fortunate enough to enter the list of China's "historical ancient capitals", and the top nine cities were Xi'an, Luoyang, Nanjing, Beijing, Kaifeng, Hangzhou, Anyang, Zhengzhou and Datong.

Is your city lucky enough to make it on the list?

As for why Nanjing can enter the list of the earliest "four ancient capitals", it will continue to be discussed later.