Beijing
A capital where the ticket for the main sight is bought a week ahead, against your passport
- When to go
- September 21° · 7 rainy days
- Per day
- €€€price 3 of 5
- How many days
- 3days
- For you
- 6 questions →
- Nearest airport
- 25 km Beijing Capital · 45 km Daxing
- Right now
Beijing does not reward improvisation: the Forbidden City sells tickets only in advance, in your own name and against your passport, at most seven and at least one day before the visit, and it is closed on Mondays unless a public holiday falls on one. Learn that at the gate and you have lost a day.
The Forbidden City ticket is €7.70 from April to October and €5.10 from November to March, and no more than forty thousand people are let in a day. Each day's slots are released a week ahead at eight in the evening Beijing time, and peak-season dates are gone within minutes. At the gate they check the passport the ticket was bought on — here it is the ticket, not a document that stays in the safe.
The Great Wall is not one place but a choice. Badaling is the closest to the centre, an hour to an hour and a half, and the S2 suburban train runs there, which is why it is also the most crowded. Mutianyu is ninety minutes to two hours by car, fully restored, with a cable car up and a 1,580-metre toboggan down, and noticeably fewer people. Jinshanling is two to three hours out, only partly restored, and you can walk it for hours without a crowd. Without a car or a guide, Badaling by train is the one easy option; with transport, Mutianyu.
The metro is signed in English and covers everything a visitor needs, but every station entrance puts your bag through an X-ray, so allow five to ten extra minutes at rush hour. You pay by phone, and the app has to work before you land — how to set it up is on the China page. By law everyone must accept cash, and since February 2026 a seller may not refuse it even for lack of change: they have to sort it out with you or send you to a bank.
What to see in Beijing
The Forbidden City
The imperial palace, built from 1406 to 1420, with 980 buildings over 72 hectares; 24 Ming and Qing emperors lived here, and it has been a museum since 1925. The Treasure Gallery and the Clock Gallery are charged separately, on top of the main ticket.
The Great Wall at Mutianyu
A restored stretch with two lifts: the cable car runs to the fourteenth tower, the chairlift to between the fifth and sixth. The toboggan only goes down, so you go up by lift or on foot.
The Temple of Heaven
The complex where the emperor prayed once a year for a good harvest. The park opens at six in the morning, and from six to eight it is full of pensioners doing tai chi, playing cards and singing — a better part of the visit than the temple itself.
The Summer Palace
A lake, a hill and a very long covered walkway, in the north-west of the city. Half a day, and the best escape from the crowds downtown.
The hutong lanes
Narrow streets of single-storey courtyard houses, what is left of old Beijing. Nanluoguxiang is the one remade for visitors — shops, bars and souvenirs.
Tiananmen Square
One of the largest city squares in the world. Even crossing it needs a free advance reservation on your passport through the official WeChat mini-program, then a check and an X-ray; without one you are turned back at the entrance.
Two things you probably did not know
The Forbidden City has 980 buildings and almost nine thousand rooms, and for five centuries nobody could enter without the emperor's leave. It opened to the public only in 1925.
The story that the Great Wall is visible from space with the naked eye is not true. The wall is a few metres wide and the same colour as the ground around it; the Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei confirmed in 2003 that he could not see it.
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Within reach from here
Places sorted by straight-line distance from Beijing — day trips or weekends.
China
→A country the size of a continent, where the hard part is sorted out before you fly: payment, internet and tickets
Japan
→A country where a train five minutes late hands the passenger a written delay certificate
Vietnam
→A country sixteen hundred and fifty kilometres long, where north and south are never in season together
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