A medium-sized town, about 450km northwest of Lanzhou and 150km southeast of Jiayuguan, ZHANGYE has always been an important stopover for caravans and travelers on the Silk Road. Indeed, Marco Polo spent a whole year here. Today it's still worth stopping, especially if you have time for a visit to the Buddhist Mati Si, 60km south of the town.

During the Ming period, Zhangye was an important garrison town for soldiers guarding the Great Wall, and today the road from Wuwei to Zhangye is still a good place from which to view the Wall, visible for a large part of the way as a slightly sad and crumbling line of mud ramparts. Initially it runs to the north of the road, until, quite dramatically, the road suddenly cuts right through a hole in the Wall and continues on the other side.

Although Zhangye is not generally an attractive town, there are a number of places that offer at least a day of sight-seeing. The center of the town is marked, as in many Chinese towns, by a Gulou(Drum Tower) at the crossroads. The tower, built in the Ming dynasty (1507), has two tiers and houses a massive bronze bell. The four streets radiating out from here, Bei jie, Dong Jie, Nan Jie and Xi Jie, are named after their respective compass points, and most of the sights are in the southwest of town in the vicinity of the Zhangye Hotel.