Abstract: There is an urgent requisite on the preservation of Chinese ancient architectures, since environmental and time impacts have been abating their structural resistance capability. In order to provide the basic characteristics of the timber structures as fundamental information for preservation on-site measurements and model tests were conducted on the front tower over Xi'an City Wall. Many valuable data and information were obtained, such as the vibration modes of the structure. In this paper, the experimental results are discussed in detail. In the forthcoming companion paper, numerical analysis will be conducted.