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Beijing City Tour: Tiananmen, Forbidden, Summer Palaces
5.0
178 Ratings
Beijing
Experience the grandeur of Beijing on a private tour. Visit Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. Enjoy personalized attention from a private guide and explore the city’s iconic landmarks.
Experience the grandeur of Beijing on a private tour. Visit Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Summer Palace. Enjoy personalized attention from a private guide and explore the city’s iconic landmarks.
Duration:
8 hours
Cancellation:
24 hours
Highlights
- Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen Guangchang) - After picking you up from your centrally located hotel in Beijing in the morning, you will start your day trip by visiting Tian’anmen Square, the world’s largest public square. Explore the sites around the square with opportunities to take some amazing pictures.
- Forbidden City-The Palace Museum -…
- Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen Guangchang) - After picking you up from your centrally located hotel in Beijing in the morning, you will start your day trip by visiting Tian’anmen Square, the world’s largest public square. Explore the sites around the square with opportunities to take some amazing pictures.
- Forbidden City-The Palace Museum - Then you will spend a couple of hours wandering around the magnificent Forbidden City which is an amazing example of Imperial architecture, and you will learn about the history and stories of the palace. Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, and Gu Gong in Chinese, lies at the city center of Beijing, and once served as the imperial palace for 24 emperors during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 - 1911AD).
There is another option: just purchase the entrance ticket to Forbidden City. You can use your passport to enter.
- Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) - After lunch, head to Summer Palace and visit the largest and most well-preserved royal park in China. It greatly influences Chinese horticulture and landscape with its famous natural views and cultural interests, which also has long been recognized as ‘The Museum of Royal Gardens’. You will get a chance to take a boat ride at the Summer Palace (opens from 1st April to 30th Oct.) to enjoy the Kunming lake and also get off at the south-facing island and leave from another exit.
There is another option: purchase the entrance ticket to Summer Palace. We will send you the QR code in advance, you can scan to enter freely.
What's Included
- Hotel pickup and drop-off
- Professional English/other language guide
- Lunch in a local Chinese restaurant
- Entrance Tickets to the Sights
- Transportation (Private Transfer or Subway according to options you choose)
- Hotel pickup and drop-off
- Professional English/other language guide
- Lunch in a local Chinese restaurant
- Entrance Tickets to the Sights
- Transportation (Private Transfer or Subway according to options you choose)
What's Not Included
- Dinner
- Gratuities
- Personal Cost
- Dinner
- Gratuities
- Personal Cost
Additional Information
Do full justice to three of Beijing’s must-see sights with a privately guided city sightseeing trip. Check out Tiananmen Square, the immense square at the heart of the city, and explore the highlights of the Forbidden Palace and the Summer Palace on guided walking tours.
All entrance fees, private transfer with driver, hotel pickup and drop off all…
Do full justice to three of Beijing’s must-see sights with a privately guided city sightseeing trip. Check out Tiananmen Square, the immense square at the heart of the city, and explore the highlights of the Forbidden Palace and the Summer Palace on guided walking tours.
All entrance fees, private transfer with driver, hotel pickup and drop off all transfer with lunch at local Chinese restaurant are all inclusive.
- Please wear comfortable shoes
- Operates in all weather conditions, please dress appropriately
- Please make sure to provide your full name and passport number for entrance tickets purchase to Forbidden City in advance
- If you prefer to have different language tour guide than English one, please kindly make your booking with request 3 days advance
Location
Tiananmen Square (Tiananmen Guangchang)
West Changan Street, Dongcheng District,
Cancellation Policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
Customer Ratings
5.0
(178 Ratings)
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Marianamf5521nj
Nov 2, 2024
Beijing tour - The guide and the driver were super friendly, the food was delicious. And he gave us many recommendations regarding food, places and mobility.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Lauren_d
Nov 2, 2024
Absolute must!!! Incredible!!! - Our tour guide was Susie, Susie was incredible. So knowledgable, kind, and attentive. She took time to explain all of the history and answer all of our questions. She was patient with us and super helpful. We absolutely loved this private trip and would highly recommend for anyone visiting Beijing. These sites can be really overwhelming, so having someone who knew the area was so worth it. It does seem a little pricey, but for us, it was well worth it!!
Review provided by Viator
Z6299bydavid
Oct 31, 2024
Great Experience! - May Wang was our competent and friendly guide who took us to see these amazing sites in Beijing. From the vast expanses of Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, to the cool and relaxing Summer Palace, she expertly spoke on the history while navigating us through the crowd. What a great experience.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Petya_s
Oct 26, 2024
Excellent way to explore the key historic highlights of Beijing - Tour was excellent. Perfectly organised by Catherine and her company. My tour guide was Joe. Excellent guide with a lot of knowledge and passion in history. All passes to Tian'anmen, Forbidden City and Summer Palace are done in advance so you really minimize your waiting time at the queue. I got picked up from my hotel at 09.00am and came back at 16.15. We started with Tian'anmen square and then forbidden city. Joe gives you the key highlights without overwhelming you with too much information. Then we had a delicious lunch in a local restaurant which was full of local people and headed to Summer Palace. Strongly recommend. I am a solo traveller on business trip but as I had a weekend in Beijing wanted to profite by exploring this magnificent city.
Review provided by Viator
Valentingc5023kw
Oct 25, 2024
Amazing experience - We had an amazing day with three of the must have objectives in Beijing. The tour was very well organized with a stop for a lunch that was quite good. Our guide, Jenny, was very funny and provided us a lot of information. This is a must have tour in my opinion and if you have the possibility to select the guide, I recommend you to ask for Jenny.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Jenpeyc1
Oct 23, 2024
Great Tour, Fantastic Tour Guide - Took my family to Beijing for a 5-day tour and everything was so well organised. We felt so welcomed and had so much fun (and great meals). Drivers were very friendly, courteous and patient even when traffic was crazy most times. I highly recommend Peter, our tour guide, who basically is a walking encyclopaedia. His knowledge of Chinese history is extraordinary, what a great story teller! He also gave us superb food recommendations, which my family said were some of the best meals they had there. Very grateful to have crossed paths with genuine people as such who helped make our Beijing trip extra sweet. Thank you!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Nbgoldby
Oct 23, 2024
Peter the great - I had a fantastic time visiting the Palace Museum (forbidden city) with Peter. He was full of interesting facts about the imperial history of China and he had lots of helpful insights for travellers. I also enjoyed a delicious local lunch and spent the afternoon seeing the summer palace. Well done Peter - also the driver was excellent and very safe.
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Marialz6447hv
Oct 22, 2024
Great tour, great guide! - We had a really nice day with Helen! She showed us the Tiananmen square, forbidden city and the summer palace with great knowledge. Would highly recommend!
Review provided by Tripadvisor
Yvonne_e
Oct 25, 2024
Must do tour. - Enjoyed all of the tour particularly the Summer Palace. Has a 40 minute wait to get into Tian’anmen Sqaure but it was worth the wait to get a sense of recent history. Lots of cctv hardware on display. forbidden City was impressive. Our guide Suzie was excellent - very knowledgable and very friendly.
Review provided by Viator
Celia_h
Oct 24, 2024
Great guide and smooth visit without waiting despite the crowded places - I really recommend getting a guide for the Forbidden City as it’s quite complicated to navigate Tiananmen to get in, pass the police checkpoints, and find where to get tickets without any guidance if you don’t speak Mandarin (the place is huge, with multiple entrances, and a lot of domestic tourists visit it every day). I recommend going on a Wednesday or a Thursday: less crowded days than the other days. My guide, Wendy, was excellent. I told her I wanted to avoid the crowds and she did her best to find the shortest lines and the best options everywhere. In the end we did not wait in line very long, which was quite surprising given the crowds there, and really pleasant. She spoke well English, was very nice, gave me good information about the different sites we visited (I particularly loved learning the backstory of the Summer Gardens). I wanted to make a stop at the Jingshan Park to take a picture of the Forbidden City from above and we were able to do this after visiting the Forbidden City. Wendy also helped me find a grocery store after the tour, which she didn’t have to do since the tour was over, but she took the time to ensure I got the help I needed. It was very nice of her and I cannot recommend Wendy enough; she was amazing.
My only slight negative feedback is with the tour operator. I got no answers on the Viator platform from them despite sending multiple messages and had to call them to verify the starting time and if everything was ok. I was told that they have a lot of tours and clients and can’t answer to everyone. However, I usually get answers in the messaging section of Viator for tours I’ve booked (90% of the time), including in China. This is especially annoying when booking a private tour. And even with group tours in Beijing I got replies from other tour operators on Viator. So it would be appreciated if the tour operator could be a bit more responsive on Viator before a tour (especially before the payment goes through). There are a lot of tour operators to choose from and when booking a tour, especially an expensive private tour, I appreciate making sure that this is the right tour for me (such as ensuring it’s possible to focus on certain areas while going faster on others, depending on what we’re most interested in).
Review provided by Viator
