Skip the Line: Beijing Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) Tickets

Skip the Line: Beijing Summer Palace (Yi He Yuan) Tickets

The Summer Palace’s landscaped gardens, temples, and pavilions were designed to achieve harmony with nature. During the hot summer time in Beijing, the imperial family preferred the beautiful gardens and airy pavilions of the Summer Palace. The Qing Empress Cixi was living there for quite some time, giving rise to some wonderful tales of extravagance and excess. The Summer Palace was listed as World Heritage in 1998 by UNESCO, which reported that “The Summer Palace is a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design”. The design of Summer Palace harmonizes plants and paths, water and land, architecture and horticulture, epitomizing the philosophy and practice of Chinese garden design. It is definitely worth a visit!

Visit: Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), No.19 Xinjian Gongmen Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100080 China

The Summer Palace is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden in the Qing Dynasty. Mainly dominated by Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake, it covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometres (1.1 sq mi), three-quarters of which is water. 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. The King and Queen of Qing Dynasty use to spend their summer time in this place, and that is why it is called Summer Palace. In December 1998, United Nations Education Science and Culture Organization (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".