Laolongtou — where the Great Wall enters the sea (Shanhaiguan)

Granite blocks up to 2.6 metres long and about 3 tonnes each, cut with grooves and locked together with molten iron poured into them — built in 1579 to take the sea, and still standing after four hundred years.

Laolongtou is the point where the Ming Great Wall runs into the Bohai Sea, the eastern end of the wall's sea entry. It is made up of the sea-entering stone rampart, the Chenghai Tower and Ninghai Fort, and forms the core section of Shanhaiguan.

Most Great Wall day trips from Beijing go to the mountain sections and never reach the coast — this is a separate destination in Qinhuangdao, not an add-on to Badaling or Mutianyu. The sea-entering rampart was destroyed by naval bombardment in 1900 and what stands today is a restoration reopened in 1986.