Ranking of Beijing attractions: Palace Museum, Summer Palace?, Badaling Ancient Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven Park, Wangfujing. All worth a visit.

The Palace Museum is a comprehensive museum in China established on the basis of the imperial palaces of the Ming and Qing dynasties and their collections. It is located in the center of Beijing, connected to Tiananmen Square in the front, Jingshan Mountain in the back, Wangfujing Market in the east, and Zhongnanhai in the west. In 1961, with the approval of the State Council, the Forbidden City was designated as one of the first batch of key cultural relics protection units in the country.

In 1987, the Forbidden City was included in the "World Cultural Heritage" list by UNESCO. According to ancient Chinese astrological theory, Ziweiyuan (i.e. the North Star) is located in the middle of the sky and is the residence of the Emperor of Heaven. Heaven and man correspond to each other. Therefore, the residence of the Emperor is also called the Forbidden City. After the third emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di, decided to move the capital to Beijing after seizing the throne, he began to build this palace and it was completed in the 18th year of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty (1420).

The Summer Palace is the largest and best-preserved royal garden in China and one of the four famous gardens in China (the other three are Chengde Summer Resort, Suzhou Humble Administrator's Garden, and Suzhou Liuyuan Garden). Located in Haidian District, Beijing, it is a large-scale natural landscape garden built based on the scenery of West Lake in Hangzhou and drawing on some design techniques and artistic conception of Jiangnan gardens. It is also the most complete preserved royal palace garden and is known as the Royal Garden Museum.

The Summer Palace was originally the palace and garden of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. It was formerly known as Qingyi Garden and consisted of three mountains and five gardens. It is the last garden built among the Five Gardens (Yi Garden, Jingyi Garden, Jingming Garden, in addition to the nearby Changchun Garden and Yuanmingyuan, collectively known as the Five Gardens).