Beijing | China

Beijing Summer Palace

China Discovery Tour

Beijing | China

30 Dec 2019 | Mon

Day 03 of 18

  • Temple of Heaven
  • Beijing Summer Palace
  • Lunch | Man Jie Dumpling Beijing
  • Rickshaw Ride Through Beijing Hutongs
  • Beijing | Sights Around the City

Beijing Summer Palace

Beijing Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens, and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden and a summer retreat for the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The palace is largely destroyed and rebuilt, with its largest reconstruction occurring in 1888. Today, it is a popular tourist destination in Beijing.

The Summer Palace covers an area of 2.9 square kilometers, three-quarters of which is water. The Kunming Lake, covering 2.2 square kilometers, was entirely man-made and the largest artificial lake in China at the time it was built.

The Summer Palace is renowned for its many beautiful features, including the Long Corridor, the Marble Boat, Seventeen-Arch Bridge, Longevity Hill and Yuquanshan Park. These features are all connected by a series of pathways that wind around the lake and through the hills.

The Summer Palace is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden in the Qing dynasty. Inside includes Longevity Hill Kunming Lake and Seventeen Hole Bridge. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometres (1.1 sq mi), three-quarters of which is water.

Longevity Hill is about 60 metres (200 ft) high and has many buildings positioned in sequence. The front hill is rich with splendid halls and pavilions, while the back hill, in sharp contrast, is quiet with natural beauty. The central Kunming Lake, covering 2.2 square kilometres (540 acres), was entirely man-made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill.

Inspired by the gardens in South China, in the Summer Palace there are over 3,000 various Chinese ancient buildings that house a collection of over 40,000 kinds of valuable historical relics from each dynasty.

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace “a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value”.

– Wikipedia Beijing Summer Palace

Unfortunately, we visited the “Summer” Palace in the Winter (on a brutally cold day), but we found the Summer Palace to be a beautiful place full of history and culture. It is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Beijing..

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