China
Beijing
Eight centuries of Chinese capital on one axis: the Forbidden City at its centre, the Great Wall along the ridgeline north.
Beijing has been the seat of Chinese power for most of eight centuries, and it still feels arranged around that fact: a grid of vast avenues laid on a north-south axis, with the Forbidden City sitting dead centre behind its moat. The Great Wall runs along the mountains an hour or two north. Between the monuments are grey-brick hutong lanes, imperial parks, a serious contemporary art scene and some of the best eating in the country. It is enormous, formal and hard work, and nowhere else stacks up this much history.
Suggested stay
4–6 days
Language
Mandarin Chinese
Currency
CNY
Timezone
UTC+8
Why you'll love Beijing
The axis the whole city is set out on one north-south line, from the Bell Tower through the Forbidden City to the Temple of Heaven, and you feel it as you walk.
The Wall within two hours of the centre it climbs the mountains, restored and unrestored, along ridges you can walk for hours without reaching the end.
Hutongs grey-brick lanes and courtyard houses survive behind the boulevards, running on barbers, noodle shops and men playing cards in the shade.
Food Peking duck is the headline, but the city eats every province at once, from imperial court cooking to Muslim Xinjiang lamb skewers.
Best time to visit
Apr-May, Sep-Oct
Pleasant spring · 19-27° days
39.906° N, 116.391° E
UTC+8 · Asia/Shanghai
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Weather & when to go to Beijing
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-May, Sep-Oct
Conditions Jan-Feb Cold & dry · Mar Windy & dusty · Apr Pleasant spring · May Warm & dry · Jun Hot building · Jul Hot & wet · Aug Heavy rain · Sep Crisp & clear · Oct Autumn foliage · Nov-Dec Cold & dry
Watch for Dec-Feb smog risk
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Beijing
July and August are hot, humid and wet, with the summer rains and the school holidays arriving together. The other trap is not weather but crowds: the national holiday week in early October and the Spring Festival period fill the Forbidden City and the Wall with the whole country. Spring can bring dust off the Gobi.
Top things to do in Beijing
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Forbidden City - the Ming and Qing palace at the centre of the city
history culture arts 👍 PopularNearly six centuries of imperial residence behind a moat and a purple-red wall: courtyard after courtyard of yellow-tiled halls strung along the city's central axis, with quieter treasure and clock galleries off to the sides. Entry is by timed online booking against your passport and sells out; it closes on Mondays. Walk it south to north and finish on Jingshan.
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Great Wall at Mutianyu - restored battlements above forested hills
history scenic ⭐ Highly recommendedThe best-balanced section within reach of the city: heavily restored, well signed and set on a wooded ridge that is spectacular in autumn colour and under snow. A cable car or chairlift saves the climb and a toboggan run takes you down. Far calmer than Badaling, the section the tour buses default to.
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Temple of Heaven - the round hall where emperors prayed for the harvest
history culture arts 👍 PopularA triple-eaved wooden rotunda on a marble terrace, built without nails, inside a walled park laid out as a diagram of heaven and earth. Come early: the park is where retired Beijingers do tai chi, sing opera, dance and play cards under the cypresses, which is half the reason to go.
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Summer Palace - lake, long corridor and temple hill in the northwest
history scenic 👍 PopularThe Qing court's warm-weather retreat: Kunming Lake with its seventeen-arch bridge, Longevity Hill stacked with temples, a painted covered walkway running most of a kilometre, and Cixi's marble boat. Big enough to swallow a half day, and one of the few places in Beijing that reads as landscape rather than city.
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Hutongs and the Drum and Bell Towers - the old city on foot
history off beaten path ⭐ Highly recommendedBehind the boulevards, lanes of single-storey courtyard houses survive in patches around the Drum and Bell Towers and the Shichahai lakes. Some are polished into bars and boutiques, most are not. Wander on foot or by bike; the two towers still face each other across a small square and can both be climbed.
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Tiananmen Square and the National Museum of China - the political centre
history culture artsAn enormous ceremonial square flanked by the Great Hall of the People and the national museum, with Mao's portrait on the gate and his mausoleum in the middle. Entry needs your passport, a security check and usually an advance booking. The museum's ancient China galleries downstairs are the real draw.
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Lama Temple and the Confucius Temple - Tibetan Buddhism and the imperial academy
history culture artsYonghegong is a Qing prince's mansion turned working Tibetan Buddhist monastery, thick with juniper smoke and holding a Maitreya carved from a single sandalwood trunk that rises through three storeys. Across the hutong, the quiet Confucius Temple and Imperial Academy keep stone stelae listing centuries of successful civil service candidates.
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Peking duck - the dish the city exports
foodLacquered, fire-roasted and carved at the table into skin, fat and meat, eaten with thin pancakes, scallion and sweet bean sauce. The old hanging-oven houses and the modern rooms argue about crispness and both are worth a long dinner. Book ahead, because the good ones fill.
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798 Art District - Bauhaus factories turned galleries
culture artsA disused East German-designed electronics complex in the northeast, now a sprawl of contemporary galleries, studios and cafes under sawtooth roofs, with Maoist slogans still painted on the beams. Commercial and uneven in parts, but the serious spaces here are the centre of Chinese contemporary art.
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Jingshan Park - the view down onto the Forbidden City
scenic historyAn artificial hill raised from the spoil of the palace moat, directly north of the Forbidden City. Ten minutes of steps put you in a pavilion looking straight down the golden roofs along the central axis. It is the single best view in Beijing, and best in late afternoon.
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Old Summer Palace - the ruins the foreign armies burned
historyYuanmingyuan was a vast pleasure garden of Chinese and European palaces until Anglo-French troops looted and burned it in 1860. The baroque stone fragments have deliberately been left tumbled where they fell, as a national memorial. Lakes, lotus and woodland fill the rest, and it adjoins the Summer Palace.
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Olympic Park - the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube
culture arts scenicThe 2008 stadium's steel lattice and the bubble-clad aquatics centre stand at the north end of the same axis that runs through the Forbidden City, which was the whole point of putting them there. Both can be entered, and the park is at its best after dark when they are lit.
Best areas to stay in Beijing
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Dongcheng
First-time visitors $$Imperial core, hutongs and temples
Explore hotels in Dongcheng →
Xicheng and Shichahai
Old-city atmosphere $$Lakeside hutongs and courtyard hotels
Explore hotels in Xicheng and Shichahai →
Qianmen and Dashilan
Budget and central $Restored old streets south of Tiananmen
Explore hotels in Qianmen and Dashilan →
Sanlitun
Nightlife and dining $$$Bars, embassies and glossy malls
Explore hotels in Sanlitun →
Guomao and the CBD
Business travellers $$$Towers, business hotels, wide roads
Explore hotels in Guomao and the CBD →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Beijing
Getting to & around Beijing
Getting there
Fly into PEK, then about 25 minutes on the Airport Express to Dongzhimen and the subway from there.
Flight
Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK)
Capital sits roughly 30 km northeast. The Airport Express train links Terminals 2 and 3 with Dongzhimen in about 25 minutes, meeting subway lines 2 and 13; airport coaches serve several city points, and a taxi takes anywhere from 40 minutes to well over an hour in traffic. Some flights use Daxing (PKX) far to the south instead, which has its own express line to Caoqiao.
Train
Beijing South, Beijing West and Beijing Chaoyang
The high-speed network reaches Shanghai, Xi'an, Guangzhou and Harbin from three different terminals, so check which station your ticket names.
Coach
Liuliqiao and Sihui bus stations
Long-distance coaches still serve provincial towns off the rail network, but for anywhere major the train has replaced them.
Drive
Foreign licences are not valid in mainland China, so arriving by road realistically means a hired car with a driver.
Getting around
Subway
More than twenty lines, signed in English, frequent and the fastest way across the city. Bag screening at every entrance.
TBC
Taxi and ride-hailing
Metered taxis are everywhere and Didi is easier once set up, since almost no driver speaks English. Traffic seizes solid at peak.
TBC
Cycling
Share bikes on every corner and a flat city with wide separated lanes, though the avenues are long and exposed.
TBC
Bus
Dense and very cheap, but hard work without Chinese; the subway almost always wins.
TBC
Walking
Fine inside a hutong quarter or a park, hopeless between them - the blocks are on an imperial scale.
Free
Day trips from Beijing
Mutianyu Great Wall
Full dayRestored Great Wall
The section most worth the drive: about seventy kilometres northeast, restored along a wooded ridge with watchtowers every few hundred metres and a chairlift up. Hotels and agencies run vans; the public route works but eats time at the transfer.
Getting there
car | bus | tour
1.5-2 hr each way by car or shared van, or a public bus and local transfer
Jinshanling to Simatai
Full dayWild Great Wall hike
Two to three hours of ridge walking on largely unrestored wall: original brickwork, half-collapsed towers, enormous views and almost nobody on it. The classic route runs east toward Simatai. Gubei Water Town sits below, a rebuilt village that is floodlit at night.
Getting there
car | tour | walk
2-2.5 hr each way by car or tour bus
Ming Tombs
Half dayImperial burial valley
Thirteen Ming emperors lie in a valley below the hills, approached by the Sacred Way, an avenue lined with stone officials, elephants and mythical beasts. Two tombs are open, one excavated down into its underground chambers. Usually paired with a Wall trip in the same direction.
Getting there
train | bus | car
About 1 hr by Changping subway line and bus, or by car
Tianjin
Full dayTreaty-port river city
Half an hour by bullet train to a port city of concession-era architecture, with Italian, British and German streets left over from the treaty years, a riverside promenade and a ferris wheel built into a bridge. A sharp contrast with imperial Beijing.
Getting there
train
35 min each way by high-speed train from Beijing South
Chengde
1-2 daysQing summer capital
The Qing emperors' escape beyond the Wall: a walled imperial park of lakes, grassland and pavilions, ringed by the Eight Outer Temples, one of them a scaled-down Potala. High-speed rail brought it within a long day, though it repays a night.
Getting there
train
About 1 hr each way by high-speed train
A little history of Beijing
Beijing sits where the north China plain meets the mountain passes, which made it a frontier garrison long before it was a capital. The Jin made it Zhongdu in the twelfth century; Kublai Khan rebuilt it as Dadu, the Mongol capital Marco Polo described. The Ming emperor Yongle moved his court north in 1420, laid the walled city out on a single north-south axis and put the Forbidden City at its heart. The Qing took the same palace in 1644 and barely altered the plan.
The last century and a half was harder on it. Foreign armies burned the Old Summer Palace in 1860 and occupied the city in 1900; the empire ended in 1912; and after 1949 the new government pulled down the city walls and most of the gates to make ring roads, then cleared the ground before the palace to create Tiananmen Square. The hutongs went in waves after that. What survives is a monumental centre inside a city of twenty million, with the 2008 Olympics extending the imperial axis north.
The Jin dynasty makes the city its capital, Zhongdu.
Kublai Khan rebuilds it as Dadu, capital of the Yuan empire.
The Ming move the capital north; the Forbidden City is completed.
Manchu armies take the city and the Qing rule from the same palace.
Anglo-French forces loot and burn the Old Summer Palace.
Puyi abdicates in the Forbidden City, ending imperial rule.
Mao proclaims the People's Republic from the Tiananmen gate.
Student-led protests in Tiananmen Square end in a military crackdown.
The Olympics add new subway lines, an airport terminal and the Olympic Park.
Know before you go
Payment
Cash preferred
English
Limited
Wifi
Workable
Power
Type A / I
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+86
Smog risk in this window; check current conditions before you go.
The months our climate read flags to avoid: the wettest, lowest-rated weather of the year.
Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
A China eSIM installs in minutes and works the moment you switch off flight mode. No SIM swap, no roaming bill.
FAQs about Beijing
▸ When is the best time to visit Beijing?
April and May, then September and October. Autumn is the pick: dry, clear and with real colour on the hills and the Wall. Midsummer is hot, humid and wet, and winter is cold, dry and windy, though a snowy Wall and skating on the frozen lakes are their own reward.
▸ How many days do you need in Beijing?
Four is the working minimum: one for the Forbidden City and the square, one for the Wall, one for the Temple of Heaven and the hutongs, one for the Summer Palace. Five or six lets you add the Lama Temple, 798 and a day trip without route-marching between sights.
▸ Which part of the Great Wall should I visit?
Mutianyu for most people: restored, scenic, a chairlift, and far less crowded than Badaling, which is closest and busiest. Jinshanling or the walk toward Simatai if you want unrestored wall and a proper hike. All of them need a car, van or tour, and half a day at minimum.
▸ Is Beijing walkable?
Inside the hutongs and parks, very much so. Between districts, no: the avenues are ten lanes wide and the blocks imperial in scale, so what looks like two centimetres on a map is a long, hot walk. Use the subway for anything crosstown, or hire one of the share bikes.
▸ How do you pay for things in Beijing?
Almost everything runs on QR payments through Alipay or WeChat, both of which now let foreign cards be linked; set them up before you fly. Cash is still legal tender and taxis and older shops take it, so carry some notes. Foreign credit cards alone will strand you in a lot of places.
▸ Is the air pollution still bad?
Much better than the reputation. Sustained controls since the mid-2010s cut the worst of it, and clear blue days are now normal, especially in autumn. Bad spells still happen in winter when coal heating and still air combine, and spring can bring dust off the Gobi. Check an index app and plan outdoor days around it.
More in China
Shanghai
The one Chinese city built to look outwards - a treaty-port waterfront on one bank, the country's tallest skyline on the other, and the eating to match.
✓ best Mar-May, Oct-NovXi'an
The eastern end of the Silk Road, capital to thirteen dynasties, and the city an emperor built a clay army to guard.
✓ best Mar-Oct