Handpicked experience · Beijing
Beijing, China
Four hours on foot through the Forbidden City with a private English-speaking guide: the three great ceremonial halls, the emperor’s living quarters, and out through the Imperial Garden to the north gate.
The Forbidden City was the imperial palace from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. It is located in the middle of Beijing, and now houses the Palace Museum. For almost 500 years.
Then continue to check out the living quarters in the palace: Hall of Union, Hall Heavenly Purity, Hall of Union and Hall of Earthly Tranquillity.
You will visit these buildings inside the Forbidden City. Hall of Great Harmony where the emperor handle states affairs.
Hall of Central Harmony and Hall of Preserving Harmony.
Your tour of the Forbidden city will end at the Imperial Garden, then you will exit the Forbidden city from the north Gate.
The imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, now the Palace Museum.
The three halls of the outer court, where the state was run.
The inner court living quarters — Heavenly Purity, Union, Earthly Tranquillity.
The Imperial Garden, and an exit by the north gate.
A private English-speaking guide for four hours.
The Forbidden City was the imperial palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and it sits at the centre of Beijing, now housing the Palace Museum. Four hours with a private guide, walked end to end, is enough to follow the whole central axis properly rather than at a shuffle.
The routeYou begin with the outer court and its three great ceremonial halls. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, where the emperor handled affairs of state, is the largest; behind it stand the Hall of Central Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony. Together they are the ceremonial heart of the palace, and they are built to a scale designed to make a visitor feel small.
Then the inner court, which is where the emperor actually lived — the Hall of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Union and the Hall of Earthly Tranquillity. The rooms are smaller and the register changes from state to household, and a guide is the difference between six similar halls and six rooms you can tell apart.
The tour ends at the Imperial Garden — rockeries, ancient cypresses and pavilions, the one part of the complex not laid out on a rigid grid — and you leave through the north gate.
Worth knowingThis is four hours of walking on stone, with very little shade in the great courtyards — comfortable shoes, water, and a hat in summer. The route runs one way from south to north, so you finish at a different gate from the one you entered. Bring photo identification: the Palace Museum checks it on entry.
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