Great Wall Of China, Huanghuacheng, Jiuduhe, Huairou District, Beijing, China

Soon after Europeans reached the Ming China in the early 16th century, accounts of the Great Wall started to circulate in Europe, even though no European was to see it with his own eyes for another century. Possibly one of the earliest descriptions of the wall, and its significance for the defense of the country against the "Tartars" (i.e. Mongols), may be the one contained in the Third Década of João de Barros' Asia (published 1563). Interestingly, Barros himself did not travel to Asia, but was able to use Chinese books brought to Lisbon by Portuguese traders. Other early accounts in Western sources include those of Gaspar da Cruz, Bento de Goes, Matteo Ricci, and Bishop Juan González de Mendoza. In 1559, in his work "A Treatise of China and the Adjoyning Regions," Gaspar da Cruz offers an early discussion of the Great Wall in which he notes, “a Wall of an hundred leagues in length. And some will affirme to bee more than a hundred leagues.” Another early account written by Bishop Juan González de Mendoza (translated into English in 1588) reported a wall five hundred leagues long, but suggested that only one hundred leagues were manmade with the rest natural rock formations. In another early Western account, Louis J. Gallagher’s translations (published in 1953) of the journals of the famous Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) show that Ricci mentioned the Great Wall once in his diary, noting the existence of “a tremendous wall four hundred and five miles long” that formed part of the northern defenses of the Ming Empire. In yet another case, Ivan Petlin’s 1619 deposition for his Russian embassy mission offers an early account based on a firsthand encounter with the Great Wall, and mentions that in the course of his journey his embassy travelled alongside the Great Wall for ten days. One of the earliest records of a Western traveler entering China via a Great Wall pass (Jiayuguan, in this case) may be that of the Portuguese Jesuit brother Bento de Góis, who had reached China's north-western gate from India in 1605.
Notable areas
Some of the following sections are in Beijing municipality, which were renovated and which are regularly visited by tourists today.