Beijing: Forbidden City & Mutianyu Great Wall 2-Day Private Tour

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/22

Duration2d

GroupPrivate

LanguagesEN · DE +3

PickupAt your hotel

Two Days Through Beijing's Imperial Heart and the Great Wall

You spend two full days moving through Beijing's major imperial sites—Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, and Summer Palace on day one; Mutianyu Great Wall and a Hutong rickshaw tour on day two. Hotel pickup, all entrance tickets, cable car access, two lunches including Peking roast duck, and a professional English-speaking guide are included. The tour is private, so you're not joining a group or waiting for strangers.

Step-by-step itinerary

Day 1 — Tiananmen Square to Summer Palace

Meet guide and driver at hotel
Visit Tiananmen Square and gate
Explore Forbidden City with guide
Lunch with famous Peking Duck
Visit Temple of Heaven park
Tour Summer Palace gardens

Day 2 — Mutianyu Great Wall and Hutong Tour

Meet guide and driver at hotel
Visit Mutianyu Great Wall with cable car
Enjoy toboggan slide down
Lunch with trout fish feast
Take Hutong rickshaw ride
Visit local courtyard family
Walk around Houhai lake area

The Experience

Your guide and driver are already waiting at your hotel lobby when you arrive on day one. The itinerary moves fast—Tiananmen Square first, where you'll stand in front of the Gate of Tiananmen with Chairman Mao's portrait, the National Museum building, and the Monument to the People's Heroes all visible from one spot. It's the largest city-center square in the world, and the scale hits different when you're standing in it rather than reading about it. After that, you head straight into the Forbidden City, a 600-year-old royal palace where 24 emperors lived. Your guide walks you through the rooms, tells you about the concubines' lives, the power plays, the things that don't make it into the textbooks. The Forbidden City is UNESCO-listed, and it's easy to see why once you're inside the gates.

Afternoon takes you to the Temple of Heaven, built by Ming and Qing emperors as one of the world's largest worshiping structures. There's a park attached where retired locals play chess and poker—you'll see them if you arrive around 3 or 4pm. The peace of the place is real, not manufactured. Then you move on to the Summer Palace, where Empress Dowager Cixi spent her money on gardens, an opera house, and a birthday celebration pavilion. You walk the longest corridor, look out over Kunming Lake, and your guide explains why she mattered and what her extravagance cost the empire. Two lunches are included across the two days, and one of them is Peking roast duck—the thing Beijing is famous for, done properly.

Day two starts at 8:30am at your hotel. You're heading to Mutianyu Great Wall, about an hour outside the city. This section is less crowded than the famous parts closer to Beijing, but the views are just as good. You skip the entry line—your ticket is already sorted—and take the round-trip cable car up to the best vantage point. If you want, you can take the chairlift up instead and come down on the toboggan slide, which is faster and more fun if you're not worried about speed. Your guide stays with you, shares the history, walks the wall with you. It's not a rushed photo stop; you get real time up there.

The second day ends with a Hutong rickshaw tour through the old Beijing alleyways. You ride through the Hou Hai lake area, past the Yin-ding bridge, and stop at a local courtyard family's home to see how people actually live—the birdcages, the pomegranate trees, the fish pond. It's the kind of detail that makes the trip feel like more than just hitting monuments. Everything is private—no group tours, no waiting for other people to finish their photos. Your driver handles transport in an air-conditioned car between each stop. Hotel pickup and drop-off bookend both days.

What’s included

Hotel pickup and drop-off on both days.
private tour with no other groups.
professional English, Spanish, Russian, or German-speaking guide.
comfortable air-conditioned car.
all entrance tickets to Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, and Mutianyu Great Wall.
round-trip cable car or chairlift access at the Great Wall with optional toboggan slide.
Hutong rickshaw tour on day two.
two lunches including Peking roast duck.
mineral water throughout the tour.

Good to know

Easy physical levelWheelchair accessibleStroller friendlyInfant seats available

Operated by Beijing Meitu Travel Agency Co., Ltd.

Is this one for you?Book this if you want Beijing's major imperial sites covered in two days without arranging your own transport, tickets, or timing—the private format and fixed itinerary mean you move through each stop with a guide who knows the stories, not a schedule that waits for other travelers.