The Drum Tower (鼓楼) stands at the centre of Jiuquan's old city, rising three storeys above a broad brick platform in the middle of the main intersection. The structure follows the classic Central Chinese design — a wooden pavilion on a masonry base with upturned eaves — but at this scale and in this landscape it has a different feeling than the same design in a river city. The tower was the timekeeping mechanism for the garrison city: drums beat at dawn to open the city gates, again at dusk to close them.
The surrounding area still has sections of the old city street pattern, and walking the lanes between the tower and the Jiuquan Museum makes for a pleasant hour. The East Bell Tower (东钟楼), a smaller companion structure a few blocks away, is less visited and in better original condition. The Jiuquan Museum, housed in a repurposed old compound nearby, covers the city's Han Dynasty history and has a good collection of painted bricks from local tombs.