Great Wall of China Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications made of stone, brick, tamped earth, wood, and other materials, generally built along an east-to-west line across the historical northern borders of China to protect the Chinese states and empires against the raids and invasions of the various nomadic groups of the Eurasian Steppe with an eye to expansion. Several walls were being built as early as the 7th century BC; these, later joined together and made bigger and stronger, are collectively referred to as the Great Wall. Especially famous is the wall built in 220–206
History of the Great Wall of China Bishop Juan González de Mendoza (15501620) reported a wall five hundred leagues long, but suggested that only one hundred leagues were man-made, with the rest natural rock formations. The Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci (15521610) 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 defences of the Ming Empire. Europeans first witnessed the Great Wall in the early 1600s. Perhaps the first recorded instance of a European actually entering China via the Great Wall came in 1605, when the Portuguese Jesuit brother Bento