Hangzhou Historic Buildings: A Guide to the City's Declared Landmarks

Start with what you want to see

• VillasRepublican-era villas along Beishan, Nanshan and Lingyin roads.
• Shikumen lanesStone-gate lanes of the 1910s–1930s, from Yuanmaoli to Sixinfang.
• Temples and churchesFrom a Five Dynasties temple site to Sichengtang Church.
• Shops and factoriesBrush makers, silk stores, canal transfer firms and 1950s mills.
• Qing dynasty housesTimber courtyard homes in the old city, Changhe and Xiaoshan.
• What a listing meansThe 2013 regulations: categories, owners' duties and fines.

What a declared historic building is

Under Hangzhou's regulations on historic districts and historic buildings, in force since 1 January 2005, a historic building is a structure or ensemble that has stood for more than 50 years and has significant historical, scientific or artistic value. Declaring one involves consulting both the city's urban planning administration and its real estate administration, and the list is published by the municipal government in batches. Since 1 October 2013 the regulations on historic blocks and historic buildings set out what listing means.

The designation is separate from China's system of protected cultural relics sites. Its purpose is to protect ordinary but characterful buildings — homes, lanes, shops, schools — that would otherwise fall to redevelopment, and to keep their outward form while they remain in everyday use. Most declared buildings are still lived or worked in, which is why many cannot be visited inside.

The five batches, 2004–2010

Each building has a number that combines the batch and its place in the list, such as LSJZ1-1 for the Yuanmaoli lane houses, the first building of the first batch. The prefix comes from lishi jianzhu, Chinese for "historic building". Each batch page lists every building with its number, period and address.

Lakeside villas of the Republican era

The largest group of declared buildings are private villas built between 1911 and 1949, when wealthy families from Shanghai and Hangzhou built retreats on the slopes around West Lake. Most are two- or three-storey houses in plain brick or wood and brick with sloping roofs, often mixing Chinese and Western elements.

• Beishan Road, on the lake's north shore: villas at Nos. 76, 95, 97 and 100. No. 97 is a 1940s Western-style villa designed by the architect Gong Wenqian; No. 100, also called Dongshan Villa, dates from the 1930s.
• Nanshan Road, on the east shore: a row of plain-brick villas at Nos. 182, 204, 206, 210 and 214.
• Lingyin Road: No. 10, a 1930s villa that was the home of the artist Lei Guiyuan, and No. 4, the "Yellow Villa".
• Shengtang Road: the villa cluster first named Jiuzhi Small Cottage, built in the 1920s by the Shanghai businessman Huang Chujiu.
• Named villas such as Ru Lu, owned by Lin Jiuru, general manager of a Shanghai materials store, and Sui Lu (Bao's Mansion), with a stone drum bench in its courtyard and a blue-brick archway.

All the listed villas, with a page for each.

Lane houses: Hangzhou's stone-gate alleys

In the 1910s and 1920s Hangzhou built terraced lane housing behind stone-arched gateways, the local version of Shanghai's shikumen. Rows of two-storey houses open onto a narrow alley, each behind its own stone door frame.

• Yuanmaoli (LSJZ1-1): three parallel lanes of stone-arched gate houses in plain brick, built between 1911 and 1949 and cited as representative of Hangzhou's shikumen alleys.
• Wufu Alley and Jiuxing Alley (second batch): 1920s lane residences, the first apartment-style, the second in the traditional southern Chinese manner.
• West Lake Avenue Nos. 224–236 and 290–298 (even numbers): 1920s stone-arched gate buildings facing one of the city's main streets.

All the listed lane houses.

Temples and churches

• Former site of Xianning Temple, founded in the Five Dynasties period in the Banshan area and rebuilt in the Republican era.
• Former site of Manao Temple, founded in 946, destroyed during the Taiping war and restored at the end of the Qing dynasty.
• Mituo Temple, built in the 1850s and once one of the four largest temples in Hangzhou; its main hall and monks' quarters survive.
• Sichengtang Church, one of the earliest and largest Christian churches in Hangzhou, blending Chinese and Western forms.
• Former site of Shi Guanyin Ge Temple, a small Qing-dynasty courtyard temple typical of late-Qing Hangzhou.

All the listed temples and churches.

Shops, workshops and factories

The list protects working buildings too. The Shao Zhiyan Writing Brush Store is a 1920s two-storey shop in wood and brick; the former Xianzhang Silk Store is a 1920s commercial building with a Western-style front. Post-war industry appears in the fifth batch: the Hangzhou Silk Printing and Dyeing United Factory of the 1950s, the National Warehouse of Silk (1951) and the staff quarters of the Hangzhou Meat Processing Factory from the early 1950s.

Along the Qiantang River, late-Qing merchant houses at Changhe preserve the "shop in front, house behind" layout of riverside trading towns, such as the commercial transfer stations of Shen Weiquan and Ye Hanxiang.

All the listed shops and factories.

Twentieth-century landmarks

• Main Building of Hangzhou Hotel (1956), mixing Chinese and Western forms with varied roofs and flying eaves.
• Building No. 1 of Liu's Villa (Liu Zhuang), first built in the late Qing dynasty and rebuilt in 1959, where Mao Zedong stayed on his visits to Hangzhou.
• Wang's Villa (Wang Zhuang), the former residence of the Anhui merchant Wang Zixin, with a 1950s building added to the older complex.
• Hangzhou Gymnasium (1969), known for its saddle-shaped roof and honoured for its architectural design.
• Zhejiang University's Yuquan campus, 1950s teaching buildings in a blend of Chinese and Western styles.

Beyond the city centre

The later batches reach into the districts around the old city. Kong's family complex at Linpu once had more than 200 rooms, some destroyed in 1940 during the Japanese invasion. In Yuhang, a Qing-dynasty courtyard complex at Machetou Village, Jingshan Town, known as the Zhang family complex, represents the large rural residences of the area; in Xiaoshan, two late-Qing houses at Xiamen Village, Heshang Town, show the region's traditional homes.

Seeing the buildings respectfully

• Most are private homes, offices or schools. Look from the street and do not enter courtyards uninvited.
• Walk the clusters: Beishan Road on the north shore of West Lake, Nanshan Road on the east shore and the lanes of the old city centre group many buildings within a short walk.
• Look for the protection plaque that many listed buildings carry at the entrance.
• Photograph without drones around residential lanes and government guesthouses.

Arrived from an old link?

Until about 2017 this domain hosted a Chinese heritage portal, and English Wikipedia's lists of declared historic buildings still link to its building pages. Hangzhou Memory is a new, independent project with no connection to that portal: each building those links name now has an English page at the same address, built from public sources and credited on the page. Three fourth-batch entries on English Wikipedia that the city's notice does not include have no page until they can be checked.