Summer Palace Beijing: Ticket & Optional Guided Tour

★★★★★★★★★★ 4.38 (13 reviews)

Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/7

Duration2h

GroupUp to 15

LanguagesEN

PickupAt your hotel

The 728-Meter Corridor That Took 14,000 Paintings to Complete

You get entrance to the Summer Palace and the choice to explore solo or join a small group with a guide. Either way, you'll walk the Long Corridor with its thousands of paintings, see the Empress Dowager's quarters overlooking Kunming Lake, and move through a garden that's been rebuilt and refined over centuries. Book with your full name, passport number and birth date; send a scan of your passport front page when you confirm.

Step-by-step itinerary

Explore Summer Palace highlights

Visit government affairs building
See Kunming Lake and surroundings
Tour Empress Dowager Cixi's quarters
Walk along the Long Corridor

The Experience

The Long Corridor stops you cold the first time you walk it. Seven hundred and twenty-eight meters of covered walkway, beams and ceilings packed with over 14,000 hand-painted scenes — horses, birds, flowers, stories from Chinese history and mythology layered so densely you could spend an hour on a single section and still miss half of it. That's just one part of the Summer Palace in Beijing, the imperial garden that used to belong to emperors during the Qing Dynasty. The whole place sits on Kunming Lake, which takes up about 75 percent of the park and was expanded using 10,000 laborers under the Qianlong Emperor — they dug out the ground and used it to raise Longevity Hill around it.

You can book just the entrance ticket and wander through on your own, or add a guide who meets you at a fixed point and takes you through as a group. Either way, you're walking the same grounds where the Empress Dowager Cixi lived in a large complex facing the lake, with Longevity Hill at its back. The buildings themselves have their own story — the palace was built in 1750, burned down in 1860 by English and French troops, then rebuilt in 1888 by Cixi herself. So what you're standing in front of is a reconstruction, but the scale and the detail are real, and the paintings on that corridor aren't new either.

If you go with a guide, the group stays small and the tour is in the language you request when you book. Without a guide, you're exploring at your own pace, which means you can linger on the paintings or skip ahead to Kunming Lake if that's what draws you. Public transportation gets you there without needing a car. The ticket itself is entrance only — not a combo with other sites — so you know exactly what you're paying for.

What’s included

Your booking includes entrance to the Summer Palace.
If you choose the guided option, a group guide in your requested language is included.
The ticket is entrance only and does not include transportation, meals, or access to other attractions.
Public transportation is available to reach the site.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPublic transport nearby

Operated by Catherine Lu Tours

Is this one for you?Pick this if you want to see the Summer Palace without arranging transport or timing yourself — the entrance ticket removes the logistics, and the optional guide lets you choose between exploring alone or learning the history as you walk.