The history of the construction of the Great Wall can be traced back to the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the famous allusion "The Beacon Fire Opera Princes" that occurred in the capital Haojing (now Xi'an, Shaanxi) originated from this. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, countries fought for hegemony and defended each other. The construction of the Great Wall entered its first climax, but the length of the construction at this time was relatively short. After Qin destroyed the six kingdoms and unified the world, Qin Shihuang connected and repaired the Great Wall of the Warring States Period, and it was called the Great Wall of Ten Thousand Miles. The Ming Dynasty was the last dynasty to overhaul the Great Wall. Most of the Great Wall that people see today was built at this time.
The Great Wall resources are mainly distributed in 15 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities including Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Shandong, Henan, Qinghai, Ningxia and Xinjiang. Among them, the length in Hebei Province is more than 2,000 kilometers, and the length in Shaanxi Province is 1,838 kilometers. According to the national survey of the Great Wall resources by the Department of Cultural Relics and Surveying and Mapping, the total length of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty was 8,851.8 kilometers, and the total length of the Great Wall in the Qin and Han Dynasties was more than 10,000 kilometers, with a total length of more than 21,000 kilometers. The existing Great Wall cultural relics include the Great Wall wall, moat/boundary moat, individual buildings, Guanbao, related facilities and other remains, with a total of more than 43,000 sites (blocks/sections).
On March 4, 1961, the Great Wall was announced by the State Council as the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units. In December 1987, the Great Wall was listed as a World Cultural Heritage. On November 26, 2020, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the list of the first batch of important points of the National Great Wall.