Jiangning (Southern Fringe)

Jiangning, the largest of Nanjing's outer districts by area, contains a diverse mix of suburban development and substantial cultural sites. The Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, on the northern fringe of Jiangning where it meets Xuanwu District, is the imperial tomb of the Hongwu Emperor (founder of the Ming dynasty) and his empress, and is the model on which all subsequent Ming and Qing imperial tombs were based. The site is UNESCO listed and is reached by the spirit way of stone animals leading from south to north — a classical processional route worth walking in full.

The Yangshan Stele — a 600-tonne carved stele commissioned by the Yongle Emperor for his father's tomb — was abandoned mid-construction when engineers concluded it could not be moved. The unfinished stele remains at its original quarry on Yangshan, a striking and rarely-visited monument to Ming-dynasty ambition.

Niushou Mountain Buddhist Culture Park, opened in 2015, is a substantial modern-Buddhist construction project. The mountain summit holds a 56-storey underground pagoda and Buddha-relic chamber housing the parietal-bone relic of the Buddha — a relic that had been buried at the site for a thousand years and was rediscovered in 2008. The architecture combines traditional Chinese forms with substantial 21st-century scale; the underground chamber is among the most ambitious religious-architectural commissions of recent Chinese construction.

The Jiangning Hi-Tech Zone, on the eastern flat plains of the district, hosts Suning headquarters, Nanjing Iveco, several pharmaceutical firms, and the new Nanjing campus of Sino-French Engineering Joint Institute.