Summer Palace Beijing 2026: Tickets, Hours & Best Route

The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) is China's largest and best-preserved imperial garden: about 3 square kilometres of lake, hill and painted walkways roughly 15 km northwest of central Beijing. Qing emperors used it as a summer retreat from 1750, and UNESCO listed it in 1998. Older English guides call it the Summer Palace of Peking; the site is the same, and so is the metro stop you want.

It suits first-time visitors who want imperial architecture and open sky in one afternoon, and families who need room to walk rather than queue. This guide covers 2026 ticket prices, opening hours, how to reach each gate by metro, the sights worth your time and routes that fit a half or full day.

The Summer Palace sits in Haidian District at No. 19 Xinjian Gongmen Road, west of the Old Summer Palace and about 15 km from Tiananmen. It is a walled garden with seven entrances, and the gate you pick decides how much climbing you do.

The park occupies 3.009 square kilometres between Beijing's Third and Fourth Ring Roads. Longevity Hill rises in the north, Kunming Lake fills the southern three-quarters, and the two are linked by the Long Corridor and a string of courtyards built for the Qing court. Beijing itself is flat around it, but inside the walls you are walking a designed landscape, not a city park.

The North Palace Gate is the one most independent travellers use, because Line 4 drops you at the door and the route runs downhill towards the lake.

Metro Line 4 is the fastest and cheapest way in, and it reaches two of the three main gates. Beijing's subway fares run from 3 to 9 yuan depending on distance, and stations have English signage and announcements.

Line 4 trains start around 05:00 and the last trains leave the northern end shortly after 22:30, so an evening return to the city centre is comfortable.

Beijing South is the easiest arrival point: the high-speed rail station and the Summer Palace share Line 4, with no transfer at all.

Buses 331, 346, 303, 332 and 584 stop near the East and North Palace Gates; 437 and 594 serve the East Gate. A taxi or DiDi from Wangfujing or Sanlitun takes 40 to 60 minutes and costs roughly 70 to 110 yuan depending on traffic; from Capital Airport expect about 130 yuan and an hour. Traffic around the East Palace Gate is worst at weekends, so the metro usually wins.

A loop of the main sights is 4 to 6 km on foot, and the lake shore alone is over 6 km. Ferries cut the walking: 11 routes run from late March to mid-November, roughly 08:30 to 17:30, at 30 to 40 yuan one way. Six-seat electric boats cost 200 yuan per hour with a 600 yuan deposit, sold until 16:30. For 2026 the park announced that both the small boats and the ferry routes stop for winter on 2 November, so a late-autumn visit means walking the full shoreline.

The Summer Palace sells a basic admission ticket and a combined ticket. Prices drop on 1 November and rise again on 1 April, and the inner halls are ticketed separately unless you buy the combined ticket.

Prices are set by the park and shown at every gate; check the official board on arrival if a holiday surcharge is in force.

Buy the combined ticket if you plan to climb the Tower of Buddhist Incense and see Suzhou Street. Those two alone cost 20 yuan, and the combined ticket also adds the Dehe Garden theatre and the Summer Palace Museum for the same 60 yuan in peak season. If you are visiting on a Monday, skip it: the inner halls are closed, and the 30 yuan admission ticket covers everything that is open.

Foreign visitors book through the official Summer Palace WeChat account using a passport number, normally one to seven days ahead, then scan the passport at the gate. Trip.com also sells Summer Palace entry tickets with instant confirmation, which is simpler if you do not have WeChat Pay set up. Carry the physical passport you booked with; the gate checks it against the reservation.

Students pay half price with a valid student card. Children under 1.2 m and seniors aged 60 and over normally enter free with ID, and the inner halls also offer half-price concession tickets. Policies are applied at the gate, so bring the document that proves your age or status.

The park opens at 06:00 in peak season and 06:30 in winter, but the paid inner halls open two hours later and shut on Mondays. Plan the gate and the halls as two different timetables.

Last entry is one hour before closing, so an 18:30 arrival in winter gets you in but leaves little time.

The inner halls close on Mondays except on national public holidays. The grounds, Long Corridor, lake shore and Seventeen-Arch Bridge stay open, which makes Monday a good day for a walking visit and a bad day for climbing the tower. If the Tower of Buddhist Incense is the reason you came, avoid Monday.

Arrive at opening or after 15:00. The first hour is when the Long Corridor is walkable and the light is soft; the last two hours thin out the groups and put the sun behind you on the lake.

When the ice is thick enough, the lake becomes Beijing's largest natural skating rink. The 2025 to 2026 season ran from 17 January to 4 February 2026 on about 160,000 square metres, 08:30 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30, with single and double ice sleds and ice bikes hired at four entrances: Yulantang, Bronze Ox, Paiyun Hall and the West Causeway. Dates for the coming winter depend on ice thickness and are announced by the park.

Six sights carry the visit. Everything else is a variation on them, so build the day around these and let the rest fill the gaps. The whole garden is catalogued on Trip.com's Summer Palace page, including current opening status and visitor reviews.

The 41-metre, eight-sided tower on Longevity Hill is the garden's landmark and its best viewpoint. It is included in the combined ticket, closed on Mondays, and reached by a stone staircase of about 120 steps from the Hall of Dispelling Clouds. Climb it in the morning for the clearest view over Kunming Lake, or in the late afternoon when the light rakes across the roof tiles.

The 728-metre covered walkway along the lake is recognised by Guinness World Records as the longest painted corridor in the world, with more than 14,000 paintings on its beams and crossbeams. It connects the court area to the Marble Boat and is the one place in the park that works in rain, heat or snow. Walk it slowly and look up; most visitors photograph the pillars and miss the stories overhead.

The lake takes up three-quarters of the park. The 150-metre Seventeen-Arch Bridge links the eastern shore to South Lake Island and carries 544 carved stone lions; counting them is the standard family game. Stand on the eastern shore 45 minutes before sunset for the reflection, and come back around the winter solstice for the golden light through the arches.

The 36-metre stone boat at the western end of the Long Corridor was rebuilt in the 1890s with funds that had been raised for the navy, which is why it is remembered as much for the politics as for the architecture. It is a five-minute stop, best combined with the corridor and the lake shore.

A reconstructed Qing-era water market along the back-hill canal, entered from the North Palace Gate. It is the most theatrical part of the garden and the quietest of the headline sights before 09:00. The shops sell snacks and souvenirs; the appeal is the canal, the bridges and the painted shopfronts.

The Tibetan-style temple complex on the back hill, with red walls, white towers and far fewer visitors than the front hill. It is the best place in the park to escape a crowd without leaving the garden, and the climb through it is gentler than the front-hill stairs.

The court halls near the East Palace Gate, the Dehe Garden theatre and the Garden of Harmonious Delights are worth 30 to 40 minutes if you have the time; they are covered by the combined ticket and close on Mondays with the other inner halls.

The garden rewards a plan more than a list. These three routes cover the same highlights in different amounts of time, and each starts at the gate that suits it.

3.5 to 4 hours, about 4 km, mostly downhill.

This is the route to choose on a first visit: it hits every headline sight, keeps the climbing to one block, and ends near a bus stop and a taxi rank.

2.5 hours, almost flat, no stairs.

This route avoids Longevity Hill entirely, which makes it the right choice for grandparents, strollers and anyone visiting in summer heat.

5 to 6 hours, 6 to 8 km.

Add the Garden of Harmonious Delights behind the hill, the Dehe Garden theatre and the Summer Palace Museum to Route 1, then cross the West Causeway and its six bridges before exiting at the West Gate. Buy the combined ticket; the museum alone justifies it on a rainy day. Start at 08:00 and keep the tower for late morning, when the front hill is in sun.

The park is well served for a site of its age, but the facilities are spread out and some close earlier than the gates.

Free paper maps are available at the main gates, and the official WeChat account carries a live guide map. Audio guides in 19 languages are rented at the East Palace Gate, North Palace Gate, North Ruyi Gate and New Palace Gate; the South Ruyi Gate accepts returns only. Live guides in English, Russian and other languages can be booked at desks at the East, North and New Palace Gates. Allow 3 to 4 hours for the highlights and 5 to 6 hours for the full circuit.

Food inside the walls is functional rather than memorable; the better meals are just outside the gates. Plan lunch around the midpoint of your route rather than the park's opening hours.

Tingli Hall is the park's sit-down restaurant, serving imperial-style dishes and Beijing sweets such as pea jelly and kidney-bean rolls, at prices above the city average. Three fast-food kiosks, at Zhichun Pavilion, the east nine rooms of Paiyun Hall and Shizhang Pavilion, do noodles and rice bowls. Suzhou Street sells candied hawthorn, roast nuts and Beijing yoghurt, which is enough for a walking lunch.

Outside the East Palace Gate, the Xiyuan commercial area has a cluster of restaurants in the 60 to 90 yuan per person range, including roast duck and zhajiang noodles, and it is a 10-minute walk from Xiyuan metro station. Near the North Palace Gate there are noodle and dumpling shops on the streets off Yiheyuan Road. Both areas are more comfortable than eating inside, and both put you back at a metro stop.

The park sits in a residential part of Haidian, so the choice is between paying for proximity or using the metro from a larger hotel. Two properties cover both approaches.

The courtyard hotel beside the East Palace Gate is the only one with a guest passage into the garden, about 210 m from the gate and 670 m from Beigongmen station. It has 51 rooms and suites in Ming and Qing-style courtyards, four restaurants and a spa. The property ended its Aman management at the end of December 2025 and now trades as Beijing Summer Palace Hotel, with the buildings and team unchanged.

A 3 km drive west of the park, with a 3,000-square-metre Chinese garden of its own, a 25-metre indoor pool and seven restaurants and bars. Wanshousi station on Line 16 is about 390 m away, and a taxi to the North Palace Gate takes around 15 minutes. It is the practical choice if you want full facilities and do not need to be inside the garden.

Hotels in Zhongguancun, three metro stops away on Line 4, are cheaper again and put you within 25 minutes of the park. Staying downtown near Wangfujing or Sanlitun is workable, but budget 50 to 60 minutes each way.