Hancheng's old town occupies the original walled city on a ridge above the modern settlement. The street plan is a Ming Dynasty grid: a central axis running north-south, with the drum tower at the intersection of the main cross streets, and radiating lanes lined with the wooden-fronted courtyard residences that give the city its character. The carved decorative panels on doorways and gateways are often extremely fine — wealthy merchant families competing with each other in the quality of their craftsmanship.
The main concentration of well-preserved buildings runs along the old South Street and the lanes immediately east and west of it. The Confucian Temple near the city centre houses a small local museum. The atmosphere is genuine rather than reconstructed: people live here, small shops operate in the ground floors of historic buildings, and the scale is human and navigable on foot in half a day. If you have seen the tourist-managed historic towns of Anhui or Yunnan, Hancheng will feel refreshingly unmanaged.