What to see in Beijing
From the Forbidden City to the Great Wall

Picture this: you walk through a red gate and a vast stone courtyard opens up — then another courtyard, another gate, another throne hall, repeating until you understand why they called it "forbidden." This was home to 24 emperors across the 500 years of the Ming and Qing dynasties, with nearly 9,000 rooms. The golden roof tiles were a colour reserved for the emperor alone. Walking from the Meridian Gate in the south to the north gate takes at least three hours — and that's before you stop to see the treasures in the gallery halls.

The moment you stand in the middle of Tiananmen Square, the scale hits you — 44 hectares, room for a million people. To the north is the Tiananmen Gate with its Mao portrait and golden imperial roof; to the south, the Mao Mausoleum; on either side, the National Museum and the Great Hall of the People. It's the political heart of China and the place every visitor checks in before crossing the road into the Forbidden City. The highlight is the dawn flag-raising ceremony: soldiers march out to raise the flag with the first light of the day.

No photo really prepares you — not until you stand on the wall and watch it ride over the ridgelines until it disappears. Two sections are popular from Beijing. Mutianyu is the best for a first visit: around 60–70% fewer crowds than Badaling, beautiful forested-mountain scenery, a cable car up and a toboggan run down. Badaling is the most famous and the easiest to reach — a 30-minute high-speed train from Beijing North station. Either way it's a full-day trip. Go early to catch the wall in soft light before the crowds.

The round, triple-eaved blue Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is one of those images of China that everyone has seen — built in 1420 without a single nail. Emperors came here once a year to pray to heaven for a good harvest. But what makes the Temple of Heaven special isn't only the architecture — it's the park around it. Every morning, older Beijingers gather to do tai chi, dance, sing opera, play chess and practise the flute. It's a slice of real city life you rarely get to see. Come early and walk slowly through the park, and you'll come away with far more than a photo of the hall.

Some gardens are so big they need half a day to walk. The Summer Palace is where the Qing court escaped the city's heat. Its heart is Kunming Lake, dug entirely by hand, which fills three-quarters of the grounds. Along the shore runs the Long Corridor — a covered walkway 728 metres long, with more than 14,000 paintings on its beams, none repeated. Climb Longevity Hill to the Buddhist temple, then come down for a dragon-boat ride across the lake. It's a far more relaxing day than sightseeing in the city.

The Lama Temple is the largest and most alive Tibetan Buddhist temple in Beijing — once the residence of a prince who later became the Yongzheng Emperor. When he took the throne, the palace was converted into a temple. The highlight is in the rearmost hall: an 18-metre statue of the Maitreya Buddha carved from a single white sandalwood trunk (with another 8 metres below ground), which earned it a Guinness record. This is a temple where Beijingers come to pray seriously for success in study and work — incense smoke rises all day, and the air is thick with it.

If the Forbidden City is the Beijing of emperors, the hutongs are the Beijing of everyone else — narrow lanes of square courtyard homes (siheyuan) packed together, a way of life that's lasted centuries. Walk Nanluoguxiang, now a street of cafés and quirky shops, or the quieter lanes around the Drum and Bell Towers (Gulou), then end up at Houhai — a lake in the middle of the city where people row boats and cycle the shore by day. After dark the lakeside bars switch on their lights and live music, the colours pooling beautifully on the water. A rickshaw tour with a local driver makes a fine way to see the lanes.

After a few days of palaces and temples, 798 is a welcome change of pace. It began as a disused 1950s East-German-style military factory complex; artists slowly moved in to set up studios, and it grew into the largest contemporary-art district in China. Today it's full of galleries, outdoor installations, robot sculptures, design bookshops, stylish cafés and art-souvenir stores. The steel steam pipes still run overhead and old slogans still mark the brick walls. You can easily spend a whole afternoon wandering and shooting photos. Most galleries are free to enter (some special exhibitions charge a small fee).

This is the best-value stop in Beijing — a ¥2 ticket that buys the finest view in the city. Jingshan is an artificial hill, built from the earth dug out of the Forbidden City's moat, sitting directly to the north. It's about a 10-minute climb to the pavilion at the top (Wanchun Pavilion); turn back to the south and the entire sea of golden Forbidden City roofs lines up below you. It's the view that finally makes the scale of the palace make sense — something you can never see from inside it. Come in the late afternoon and the roofs turn molten gold before sunset.

Beihai Park sits right beside the Forbidden City to the west, one of the oldest imperial gardens in China at over 1,000 years old. Its heart is a wide lake with a small island in the middle (Jade Flower Island), crowned by a Tibetan-style White Pagoda that stands out on the skyline — a familiar sight for Beijingers. Hire a rowing boat out to the middle of the lake to look back at the pagoda against the city, or walk the shore past pavilions, flower gardens and the colourful glazed-ceramic Nine-Dragon Wall. It's a relaxed park where locals genuinely come to unwind, not just a tourist stop.

Wangfujing is Beijing's best-known pedestrian shopping street, a short walk from the Forbidden City. The wide stone-paved avenue is lined with department stores, brand shops, the Foreign Languages Bookstore and old Beijing sweet shops. To be honest, the Wangfujing Snack Street that was once famous for unusual street food has been scaled right down since the city's urban tidy-up, and now leans more towards souvenirs and crafts. Many of the traditional food vendors have moved to nearby Gui Jie and Xianyukou streets instead — so if you're here to eat seriously, head to those two.

The Olympic Park in the north of the city is the legacy of the 2008 Summer Games (and the 2022 Winter Games). The Bird's Nest (National Stadium), with its lattice of woven steel, is the piece of architecture everyone remembers. The Water Cube next to it — once the swimming venue — is now an indoor water park, its blue bubble-wrap walls shifting colour at night. The wide plaza is made for walking and photos. It's at its best at dusk, when both buildings light up: the Bird's Nest glowing orange-gold, the Water Cube an electric sea-blue. You can go up the observation deck inside the Bird's Nest for a high view over the city.