the Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is located on the outskirts of Haidian District, Beijing, China, which is 15 kilometers away from Beijing City. It is China’s leading classical garden which enjoys a worldwide reputation. The Summer Palace was first built in 1153 and served as an imperial palace for short stays away from the capital. Empress Dowager Ci Xi rebuilt it in 1888 with a large sum of money which had been appropriated to build a Chinese navy. The Summer Palace was opened to the public in 1924 and included in the UNESCO world heritage list in 1998. A whole day is needed to view it in detail. It id based on the Kunming Lake and the Longevity Hill, and is modeled on the West Lake of  Hangzhou. The techinques and conceptions of gardening is learned from Jiangnan (the south of the Yangtze River) gardening. All these make it a large natural garden, and at the same time, the most well-reserved royal palace.

The Summer Palace

The Summer Palace is a large-scale scenic palace, which covers an area of 2.97 square kilometers. It mainly consists of the Longevity Hill and Kunming Lake, and two thirds of which are water. The constructions in the palace is  the Pavilion of the Buddhist Incense. There are over 100 scenic constructions, over3555 ancient buildings. The amount of different constructions such as pavilion, terraces, halls, club and gallery are more than 3,000 rooms. Among these toutist attractions, the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity, the Hall of Jade Ripples, the Hall of Happiness and Longevity, the Longevity Hill,  the Pavilion of the Buddhist Incense, the Wisdom Sea, Jichang Garden and the Marble Boat are the most famous.

The buildings on the southern slope of Longevity Hill are characteristic of the garden. Cloud-Dispelling Hall, the Pavilion of the Buddhist Incense and the Wisdom Sea on the axis line are flanked by the Wheel Hall, Wufang Pavilion and Baoyun Pavilion and are major attractions. The bridges of the western causeway of Kunming Lake are replicas of the bridges of famous Su and Bai causeways on West Lake in Hangzhou. The marble Seventeen-Arch Bridge which spans the Eastern Causeway to South Lake Island has balusters topped by 540 carved lions in different poses.