BEIJING · CHINA
Great Wall mornings, hutong nights.
Great Wall day trips, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, the Summer Palace gardens and the Temple of Heaven. Peking duck, hutong food crawls and acrobats after dark.
Only here
Only Beijing has these three.
Palaces and night markets turn up in a lot of cities. The Great Wall, the Forbidden City and eight centuries of hutong lanes belong to Beijing alone.
A wonder of the world
Walk the Great Wall
No other country can offer this. The Wall runs the ridgelines north of the city mile after mile, climbing and dropping with the mountains. Mutianyu is the restored postcard, Jinshanling the wild one where the watchtowers crumble into the trees. You climb it, walk it, and at Mutianyu you can toboggan back down.
- 1 All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
- 2 MuBus: Mutianyu Great Wall ENG/ESP/RUS Guided Bus Tour
- 3 Beijing Full Day Tours: Tiananmen Sq, Forbidden City, Great Wall
The imperial seat
Cross the Forbidden City
The largest palace complex on earth, and for five hundred years the one place in China most people could never enter. You walk the central axis the emperors walked, gate by gate and hall by hall, from Tiananmen through the throne rooms to the imperial garden at the back. Nowhere else lets you pace out a whole imperial city.
- 1 Beijing: Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Included
- 2 Beijing: T-Square & Forbidden City Group or Private Tour
- 3 All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
The old city
Eat through the hutongs
Behind the boulevards, Beijing is a grid of grey-brick lanes called hutongs, some of them eight centuries old. This is where Peking duck was perfected and where the city still eats: courtyard kitchens, jianbing carts, copper hot pot and baijiu. You wander it on foot or by rickshaw, stopping to eat the whole way.
- 1 Beijing Hutong Walking Food and Beer Tour at Hidden Restaurants
- 2 Temple Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple, Hutong Bus Tour
- 3 Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, Lama Temple, Hutong Tours
The one everyone books
If you do one thing in Beijing.
Most travellers plan the whole trip around a single day out of the city. This is the one they pick.
The classics
Beijing's Most Popular Tours
The Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace and the hutong food crawls. The days most travellers come to Beijing for.
Where to begin
The days a Beijing trip is built around.
The Great Wall, the imperial palaces, the gardens and the gates, the hutong table and the city between flights. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big decision
Which Great Wall?
The Wall runs for thousands of miles, and the section you choose sets the whole day. Three of the best within a morning of the city, from the easy restored classic to the wild hike out east.
The imperial gardens
Where the court escaped the summer.
In the city’s northwest, the Qing emperors built themselves a lake. The Summer Palace wraps Kunming Lake in a painted Long Corridor, a marble boat and the temples of Longevity Hill, the grandest imperial garden left in China. A morning here is all willows, water and pavilions, twenty minutes from the traffic.
Read the guide: the best Summer Palace tours →Peking duck and beyond
The city eats in the back lanes.
Beijing perfected the lacquered duck, carved at the table in a hundred old houses, but the real eating happens in the hutongs. Jianbing crepes off a cart at dawn, copper hot pot in a courtyard, dumplings, skewers and sweet baijiu. A food tour is the fastest way under the skin of the city.
See the best food tours →The Forbidden City
Five hundred years of emperors.
Nine hundred buildings inside a moat, the seat of twenty-four emperors across the Ming and the Qing, and for five centuries the most off-limits address on earth. You enter through the Meridian Gate and walk the central axis the length of the palace, throne hall to imperial garden. Half a day, and you have crossed an empire.
Forbidden City tours →Temple of Heaven
An altar built to talk to the sky.
Once a year the emperor came here to pray for the harvest, and the whole complex is built around that single rite. The round, blue-tiled Hall of Prayer stands on a three-tier marble terrace, its roof raised without a single nail. The park around it is where Beijing comes to do tai chi, sing and play chess at dawn.
- 1 Beijing: The Temple of Heaven or Summer Palace Entry Ticket
- 2 Beijing Classic Full-Day Tour including the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace and Temple of Heaven
- 3 Temple of Heaven Ticket
By how long you have
How much Beijing do you have?
The city rewards a long stay, but it also does short and sharp. A few hours between flights, a single packed day, or a week with a driver and no fixed plan.
Just a layover
Beijing between flights.Visa-free layover tours that clear the airport, take in the Wall or the Forbidden City, and have you back at the gate with time to spare.
One full day
The greatest hits, in a day.Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and a Great Wall section, threaded into one long day with a driver and a guide.
Take your time
The city at your own pace.A private car and driver for the palaces, the hutongs and a wilder stretch of Wall, spread across as many days as you have.
After dark
When the lanterns come on.
The city does not stop at sunset. Contortionists and plate-spinners fill the acrobatics theatres, kung fu legends play out at the Red Theatre, and Peking opera lights the old stages red and gold. Add a night food market and the floodlit Forbidden City moat, and the evening fills itself.
See all 32 shows →By place
The city, by its landmarks.
The Great Wall for the wonder. The Forbidden City for the emperors. The Summer Palace for the gardens. The Temple of Heaven for the rites. Tiananmen for the sheer scale. The hutongs for the street life.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
The Wall if you want the big one. The palaces if you want the history. A food tour if you want the duck. A hutong walk, a night show, or the whole city in a single layover.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Beijing? Here is a three-day run that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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