The magnificent capital at Chang’an exerted a powerfully attractive force on the outside world. Like earlier capital cities in the north, Chang’an was a planned city laid out on a square grid, but it was constructed on a much larger scale them any previous capital. Its outer walls, made of pounded earth about ten to fifteen feet thick and thirty-five feet tall, extended over five miles north to south and nearly six miles east to west. The palace was in the north, so the emperor could, in a sense, face south towards his subjects, whose homes were in the 108 wards, each enclosed by a wall.