Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan): Baroque Ruins and Lotus Lakes

Lying just one Subway stop east of the better-known Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) on Line 4 (Yuanmingyuan Station), the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan, the Garden of Perfect Brightness) is one of the most atmospheric and contemplative parklands in Beijing. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, five generations of Qing emperors from Kangxi and Yongzheng to Qianlong spent more time governing the empire from the canals and pavilions of Yuanmingyuan than from the Forbidden City. Actually a trio of interconnected imperial estates (Yuanmingyuan, Changchunyuan and Qichunyuan) covering 350 hectares, the complex was famed across Europe as the "Versailles of the East" until Anglo-French expeditionary forces looted and burned its wooden palaces in October 1860 during the Second Opium War.

The Western Mansions (Xiyanglou) and Dashuifa ruins

While the hundreds of traditional Chinese timber halls vanished into ash, one extraordinary corner of Changchunyuan survived in haunting fragments because it was built of carved white marble and brick. In the 1740s and 1750s, the Qianlong Emperor commissioned Italian Jesuit court painter Giuseppe Castiglione (Lang Shining) and French Jesuit engineer Michel Benoist to design a strip of European rococo and baroque palaces complete with hydraulic waterworks, known as the Western Mansions (Xiyanglou).

Enter through the East Gate of Changchunyuan (or walk across from the main South Gate at Yuanmingyuan Subway Station) and buy the combined ticket covering the Xiyanglou Ruins scenic zone. Here you walk past the reconstructed stone labyrinth (Wanhuazhen, where the emperor watched court ladies race to a central pavilion holding lanterns on Mid-Autumn night), the broken shell-carved archways of (Xieqiqu), the zodiac water-clock fountain basin of Haiyantang, and the iconic broken baroque pillars and relief carvings of the Great Fountain (Dashuifa) facing the brick throne platform of Guanshuifa. Do not miss the adjacent exhibition hall housing a gigantic miniature wooden scale model that reconstructs how all three imperial gardens looked at their eighteenth-century zenith.

Lotus waterways and quiet trails

Outside the ruins enclosure, Yuanmingyuan is far quieter than Yiheyuan. Weeping willows, stone bridges, black swans and vast beds of pink lotus flowers cover Fuhai (the Sea of Happiness) and dozens of smaller islands. In July and August, flat-bottomed boats glide through narrow channels cut between head-high lotus leaves, making this a peaceful half-day pairing with either the Summer Palace or the nearby China National Botanical Garden.