Qing emperors' lakeside retreat — Kunming Lake, a painted corridor, hilltop views
The Summer Palace, known in Chinese as Yiheyuan, is a vast Qing-dynasty imperial garden in northwest Beijing, built around Kunming Lake and Longevity Hill. Unlike the walled Forbidden City, it is open, watery and relaxed, with boats, long corridors and hilltop views. This guide covers the ticket tiers, the Long Corridor, the lake boat, Suzhou Street and the Line 4 Beigongmen entrance that drops you by the water. Allow a half day if you want to see it properly.
The Summer Palace uses real-name timed entry sold online against your passport. You choose between a cheaper park-only ticket and a through-ticket that includes the inner courts and the Tower of Buddhist Incense. Book a day ahead in peak season.
Metro Line 4 to Beigongmen (Exit C); the north gate is a 2-minute walk and feeds straight into the gardens by the lake.
颐和园 北宫门 (north gate). For the East Gate use 颐和园 东宫门.
Enter at the North Gate (Beigongmen) for the lake first, or the East Gate for the formal court; both link into the one large circuit.
A vast artificial lake covers roughly three-quarters of the grounds, its open water framed by causeways and wooded islands. Walk the shores or take a paddle boat across to the central island for a different perspective on the hills behind.
A 728-metre painted walkway runs along the lake shore, its beams covered in thousands of tiny landscapes, flowers and figures drawn from Chinese story and myth. It is the most pleasant place to wander on a hot day.
The hilltop pagoda anchors Longevity Hill and is reached by a steep climb rewarded with a full panorama over the lake and the city beyond. The view from its terrace is the postcard image of the whole palace.
A reconstructed Qing shopping street sits on a narrow canal, where costumed vendors once amused the court with staged commerce. Today it is a quiet, pretty riverside stroll lined with small shops and gentle water.
The site began as the 18th-century Garden of Clear Ripples, built by the Qianlong emperor as a birthday gift for his mother and modelled on the lakes of Hangzhou. It centred on Longevity Hill and a vast new Kunming Lake dug by thousands of labourers drafted from across the empire over many years. The lake alone covers about 220 hectares, more than three-quarters of the whole grounds.
Destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1860, it was rebuilt by the Empress Dowager Cixi in the 1880s and renamed the Summer Palace, her retreat from the Forbidden City's heat. Much of the funding reportedly came from the navy's budget, a detail still debated by historians today and worth knowing before you visit. Cixi is also said to have diverted funds intended for the navy, though the evidence is mixed.
UNESCO listed the palace as a World Heritage Site in 1998, praising it as a masterwork of Chinese garden design. Today its 290 hectares draw millions of visitors yearly, and the lake still freezes hard enough in the coldest winters for informal ice-skating by local residents who know the frozen surface well. Boats still cross the water in summer, much as they did for the court two centuries ago.
Yes, with a foreign passport the ticket is real-name and sold online, usually a day ahead. In peak season and on holidays it can sell out, so book before you travel to be safe and avoid a long gate queue.
Park entry is about CNY 30 off-peak and CNY 60 in peak season for the through-ticket that includes the hilltop halls and Suzhou Street. The park-only ticket is cheaper but limits what you can actually enter and see.
Plan three to four hours for the full circuit: the corridor, the hill climb, the boat crossing and Suzhou Street. A shorter lakeside walk is possible in two hours if you skip the hill and the far corners.
Late spring and autumn are best, with mild weather and clear light on the water. Avoid the hot, crowded summer weekends and the frozen depths of winter, when the gardens lose much of their colour and calm.
Yes. Where the Forbidden City is enclosed and formal, the Summer Palace is open, watery and relaxed. The two together show imperial China's two faces, and the dedicated comparison page explains the difference in plain terms.
