The city of Beijing has a 3,000-year history and is a well-known historical and cultural center in China. Since Beijing was the capital of five dynasties in history, many magnificent palace buildings were built, resulting in Beijing having the most imperial palaces, gardens, temples, and tombs in China. You should not miss the following Beijing tourist attractions if you are a first-time visitor.
#1 Forbidden City
It is undeniable that Forbidden City is one of the most famous Beijing tourist attractions. It is the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, located in the center of the central axis of Beijing. The Forbidden City is centered on three halls, covering an area of about 720,000 square meters and a building area of approximately 150,000 square meters. We could find more than 9,000 houses and 70 large and small palaces here. The Forbidden City in Beijing is one of the world’s largest and best-preserved wooden structure ancient buildings. There are more than 1.8 million cultural relics in the Palace Museum. In 1987, UNESCO listed the Forbidden City as a “World Cultural Heritage,” and it became the “Forbidden City Museum.”
#2 Great Wall of China
Besides the Forbidden City, the Great Wall is another popular Beijing tourist attractions. The Great Wall is a military fortification in ancient China with a length of more than 20,000 kilometers. It is a tall, sturdy, and continuous longwall used to restrict the actions of enemy riders. The Great Wall is not purely isolated but a defense system with a wall as the main body, combined with many barriers and pavilions. It is said that the Great Wall is the only work built by human hands on the earth that can be seen from the moon.
#3 Temple of Heaven
The Temple of Heaven is another great Beijing tourist attraction that should not be missed. The Temple of Heaven was where the emperors of the Ming and Qing Dynasties worshiped heaven, prayed for valleys, and prayed for rain. It is the largest ritual building complex in ancient China. In 1998, “Beijing Royal Altar-Temple of Heaven” was listed as a world cultural heritage. The Temple of Heaven was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998 and was described as “a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design which simply and graphically illustrates a cosmogony of great importance for the evolution of one of the world’s great civilizations…”.
#4 Summer Palace
The Summer Palace, a royal garden during the Qing Dynasty in China, is a large-scale landscape garden built with Kunming Lake and Longevity Mountain as its base site and Hangzhou West Lake as a blueprint. It is also the most intact preserved royal palace garden. She was known as the “Royal Garden Museum.”
#5 Lama Temple ( Yonghe Temple)
Lama Temple is the largest existing Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing. It was the residence of Emperor Yongzheng of the Qing Dynasty before he ascended the throne. The son of Yongzheng, Qianlong, was born here. During the Qianlong period, the building was converted into a Lama Temple and became the center for the Qing government to manage the affairs of Lamaism throughout the country. In 1961, the Beijing government listed Lama Temple as a national critical cultural relics protection unit. It is now the Museum of Tibetan Buddhist Art.
#6 Confucius Temple and Imperial College Museum
Confucian Temple and Imperial College Museum were built in the Yuan Dynasty. They were combined with the ancient “Left Temple & Right Study system,” respectively serving as the emperor’s place to worship Confucius and the highest academic institution in the central government. The two groups of buildings are built along the central axis and are symmetrical in traditional Chinese architecture, forming a complete and magnificent ancient building group.
#7 Hutong
After seeing the architecture and culture of ancient Chinese royalty in Beijing tourist attractions, let’s get a taste of the life of ordinary people in old Beijing. Hutongs in Beijing originated in the Yuan Dynasty more than 700 years before. There are 6,074 famous streets and lanes in Beijing city. The ancients once used “the famous alley three hundred and six; the unknown alley is like a cow’s hair.” It is the city’s context, the main traffic road, and the place where ordinary people live in Beijing. Also, it is the essential stage for the development and evolution of Beijing’s history and culture. It records the changes in history and the style of the times and contains an intense cultural atmosphere.
