The remains of the
Kingdom of Yan era city of Zaoyang (造陽) can be located in the northeast of Xuanhua District. Xuanhua is home to a
Liao (10th-12th c.) tomb with a colored star atlas painted with 268 stars including the sun, the moon, and the five planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. In the late 14th century, prior to his elevation to
emperor of the
Ming Empire,
Zhu Di ruled his
principality of Yan from Xuanhua. Under the
Qing, it continued to serve as the seat of a
prefecture and was known to the
Jesuit missionaries as "Suen-hao-fou". In January 2016, the former rural Xuanhua County surrounding the urban Xuanhua merged with the urban Xuanhua District to established Greater Xuanhua District with both rural and urban area combined.
Military Xuanhua was the garrison headquarters for the soldiers on the Xuanda-Shanxi Military Area, one of the three military governorships of the Great Wall in the Ming Dynasty. It commanded Xuanfu Zhen, Datong Zhen, and Shanxi Zhen along the Great Wall. Xuanhua has a set of city walls built in the Ming Dynasty which are still partly intact. ==Agriculture==