In 472 BC, after the destruction of Wu by Gou Jian, the King of Yue, he attempted to further annex Chu. Counselor Fan Li supervised the construction of ideal city in Changganli, Zhonghua Gate, Nanjing, with only 1 km and 80 steps, covering an area of 60,000 square meters. Because it is small, it is also called "Yuetai".
In the seventh year of Chu Weiwang (333 BC), the state of Chu (the capital of Ying, now Jiangling, Hubei) destroyed the state of Yue (the capital of Wu, now Suzhou), and set up Jinling City in Nanjing, and built a city at the foot of Shishan Mountain. This is the origin of Nanjing being called "Jinling".
In the twenty-fourth year of Qin Shihuang (223 BC), the State of Chu perished, and the Qin Dynasty changed Jinling to Moling County. On the eve of the Three Kingdoms Battle of Red Cliffs, Zhuge Liang went to discuss with Sun Quan to break Cao Zhi's plan. When passing through Moling County, he climbed the Stone Mountain to observe the mountains and rivers. He saw the mountains headed by Zhongshan winding like a black dragon in the southeast, while the mountains in the west ending in Shishan stood like tigers on both sides of the river, so he praised "Zhongshan is long and flat, and the stone is on the tiger's side, which is actually the emperor's residence" and suggested to Sun Quan to move the capital to Moling. After Sun Quan came to Battle of Red Cliffs, he moved his capital to Moling in the 16th year of Jian 'an in the Eastern Han Dynasty (2 1 1) and renamed Moling as Jianye. The following year, it was named "Stone Town" on the basis of the former site of Jinling Town in Stone Mountain. Built on the mountain, the cliff is towering, the wall is tortuous, and the river is the pool (at that time, the Yangtze River flowed under the rocky mountain). It is a military fortress guarding the Yangtze River and the most important naval base of Sun Wu. As a battleground for military strategists, it is known as Shicheng. In the following hundreds of years, it became the military center of war defense. In the civil war, the victory or defeat is often decided by taking the stone city.
Stone Town was built on a natural cliff formed by Pukou Formation washed by the Yangtze River waves on the western slope of Liangqing in the late Cretaceous about 654.38 billion to 70 million years ago. The foundation of the wall is made of ochre pebbles, surrounded by mountains and bricked, and its circumference is about 3 kilometers. On the northern edge of the Great River, it reaches the mouth of Qinhuai River in the south, with two gates in Nankai and one gate in the east. To the west of the South Gate is the West Gate, which is surrounded by mountains and waters and separated by the Huaihe River. The danger is great now. There are stone warehouses and stone warehouses in the city to store military food and weapons. There is an alarm beacon tower at the height of the city wall, which can send out signals at any time to predict enemy invasion. In the Southern Dynasties, the status of Stone Town as a military fortress to defend the capital remained unchanged. After the Tang Dynasty, the river gradually moved westward. Since the eighth year of Tang Wude (625), Stone Town has been abandoned and has become a deserted and lonely "empty city". There is a poem "Shicheng" by Liu Yuxi, a poet in the middle Tang Dynasty as evidence: "The old country is surrounded by mountains, and the tide hits the empty city and it is lonely. In the old moon east of Huaishui, I also came to the female wall at night. "
Five Dynasties (924). The first temple, Xingjiao Temple, was built in Shitou Town, and later became a scenic spot where temples and academies were concentrated.
Under the wall between Liangmen and Caochangmen in Shitou Town, there is a protruding oval stone wall of Hongshuiyan, which is about 6 meters long and 3 meters wide. Due to years of weathering, the rubble is peeling off, pitted and mottled, with purple-black rocks and jagged rocks in the middle. From a distance, eyes, ears, nose and mouth are all faintly visible, resembling a ferocious face, so Stone Town is also called "grimace City". According to the folklore of Nanjing, this stone is as smooth as a knife. There is indeed a clear pond on the west side of grimace city, and the reflection of grimace city can be seen from one side of the water. Old Nanjing people are commonly known as "faces in the mirror". Now the Stone Town Site has been listed as a key cultural relic protection unit in Jiangsu Province and an important historical site in Nanjing.