The Sui founded a new capital, Daxing, in 582, which the Tang inherited and renamed Chang'an. Designed by Yuwen Kai on a strict grid, it covered some 84 square kilometres and held perhaps a million people, making it among the largest cities on earth. It was divided into more than a hundred walled, gated wards (fang) under curfew, with two great state-controlled markets and a north-central palace city. Its plan was exported to Japan's Heijo-kyo (Nara) and Heian-kyo (Kyoto).
Chang'an was the fullest realisation of the cosmological grid capital and the prototype East Asian planned city.
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