Five highlights not to miss
The grounds are vast — knowing what to see and in what order means you cover the best of it without wearing yourself out.
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This is the feature that tends to stop people in their tracks. A roofed wooden walkway runs 728 metres along Kunming Lake at the foot of Longevity Hill, and every beam and crossbeam carries one of around 14,000 hand-painted scenes — landscapes, flowers and episodes from classic Chinese novels such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber. Walking its length lets you take in the paintings, stay shaded from the sun and catch the lake through the columns the whole way along.
The three-tiered octagonal tower at the summit of Longevity Hill is the visual anchor of the entire Summer Palace. Wherever you stand on the lake, it tends to be there in the background. Reaching it means a fair climb up the stairs, but at the top the whole sheet of Kunming Lake spreads out in front of you, with the Seventeen-Arch Bridge and the island laid out below. It is the view that most repays tired legs.
At the western end of the Long Corridor sits a lakeside pavilion built in the shape of a paddle-steamer, carved entirely from stone — hence the name. It began as a wooden pavilion under the Qianlong Emperor before being rebuilt during Cixi's time in a hybrid Western-and-Chinese style. The boat cannot sail anywhere, being made of stone, but it has become one of the most talked-about spots in the garden, not least because of that century-old story about the navy's money.
A long, low stone bridge with seventeen arches crosses Kunming Lake from the eastern shore to South Lake Island (Nanhu Island). Its balustrades are topped with more than 500 carved stone lions, no two of them alike. On clear winter mornings the rising sun lines up to shine through all the arches at once — a shot photographers wait for, especially around the winter solstice in late December when the golden light pours straight through every opening.
5
Behind the north side of Longevity Hill, near the North Palace Gate, a canal-side shopping street recreates the watertown atmosphere of Suzhou in the Jiangnan region. The shops lining both banks were built so the imperial court could play at being ordinary townspeople out shopping on an easy afternoon. It draws far fewer people than the lakeside, which makes it ideal if you enter through the North Palace Gate (Beigongmen station): you can start here before climbing over the hill and coming out on the lake side.