Private Day Tour: Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace in Beijing

Your all-inclusive private day tour begins at 9:00am, and your professional guide and personal driver will meet you at your hotel. Your first stop is the UNESCO-listed Summer Palace, the largest and best-preserved of the surviving imperial gardens, around 40 minutes' drive from downtown Beijing.

First built in 1750 AD, during the time of the Qing dynasty Emperor Qianlong, and largely destroyed during the war of 1860, the Summer Palace centers on the expansive Kunming Lake and towering Longevity Hill. Your guide will escort you around the grounds, providing an insight not only into Chinese landscape architecture but into the lives of the imperial family who enjoyed their leisure there.

You'll break for lunch at a local restaurant and enjoy Chinese specialties before driving 20 minutes or so to the Old Summer Palace.

Celebrated for its spectacular collection of gardens, architecture, and art, this was once known as the 'Garden of Gardens' - its destruction in 1860 was a huge loss to the world. A harmonious blend of typical Chinese scenery with some western architectural features, the vast majority of what remained of the garden was damaged in the 1980s. Your guide will lead you through this landscape of crumbling walls and ruins and describe its former grandeur.

You'll leave here around 4pm to return to your hotel, arriving around 5pm.