3 Days in Beijing: Axis, Great Wall and the Two Gardens

Three days is the first length at which Beijing stops feeling like a checklist. Two days forces a straight choice between the palace and the Wall; the third day buys back the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and — more valuable than either — an hour or two where nothing is scheduled. This 3 days in Beijing itinerary uses that third day on the two great imperial spaces the short trips have to abandon, and it puts them in the order that the subway map actually rewards.

Below: an hour-by-hour route for all three days, the four things that must be booked before you land, what the whole trip costs, and the alternative day three for people who would rather not cross the city twice. Prices were checked in September 2026 — treat them as the right order of magnitude rather than a quote, because park through-tickets in particular change with the season.

The three days at a glance

The logic is effort first, distance second. Day one is the longest walk but the shortest travel; day two is a three-hour round trip on a bus with three hours of steps in the middle; day three is two big sites at opposite ends of the city, which sounds worse than it is because both are on the subway and both are outdoors, so a slow start does not cost you a timed ticket.

If you can only start early once, start early on day two. If you can start early twice, make the second one day three — the Temple of Heaven before nine is a different place from the Temple of Heaven at eleven, and that difference is most of why it is on this list.

Book these four things before you fly

• The Forbidden City. ¥60 from April to October, ¥40 from November to March. Online only through bookingticket.dpm.org.cn or the WeChat mini-program, released seven days ahead, real-name against a passport number, five people maximum per booking. Popular dates disappear within minutes of release. There are no gate sales in any circumstance, and it is closed on Mondays.
• Tiananmen Square. Free, compulsory, real-name, booked one to nine days ahead in the official WeChat mini-program, and slot-specific: dawn, morning, afternoon or evening. Book morning for day one.
• The National Museum of China, if you want it as a wet-weather substitute. Free, but the reservation is mandatory, releases seven days ahead at 17:00 Beijing time, and you must arrive with the physical passport you booked with.
• The Mutianyu tourist bus from Dongzhimen in summer and over public holidays. Off-peak, walk-up is fine.

Install Alipay first and WeChat second. Alipay has the better English interface and takes a foreign Visa, Mastercard or Amex after in-app passport verification; WeChat matters because the booking mini-programs live inside it. Do both before you cross the border, along with a map that works in China — the app-by-app rundown is here.

What three days costs

Per person, entries and transport and food, no accommodation, using the subway and the tourist bus.

The two places to spend more are a private car to the Wall — ¥800–1,500 for the vehicle, sensible for four people, poor value for two — and a guide for the Forbidden City morning, where the difference between a guided visit and an unguided one is real. The place not to spend more is a group day tour at ¥350–500 a head, which reliably includes a jade factory or a tea ceremony you did not choose.

Day one — the central axis

07:30 — Breakfast, then the square

Eat before the security queues rather than after. Jianbing from a cart or baozi and soy milk from a shop is ¥8–15 and ten minutes; the breakfast guide covers what is worth queueing for.

Tiananmen Square opens with two or three layers of passport and X-ray checks, and you need the physical document you booked with. The square is deliberately vast and forty minutes covers it unless you are going into the Mausoleum. The full square guide has the flag-raising ceremony, which is a dawn slot and a separate decision.

09:30 — The Forbidden City

In at the Meridian Gate, out at the Gate of Divine Prowess, one direction only. Three hours is the working figure and it covers the three great halls, one loop through the eastern palaces where the rooms are small enough to imagine living in, the imperial garden at the north end, and the Treasure Gallery for ¥10 more.

On the Clock Gallery, the honest verdict: the European automata are extraordinary and it is still the first thing to drop if you are running late, because you can see clockwork anywhere and you cannot see the Hall of Supreme Harmony anywhere else. The galleries ranked by what they are worth, and the route through the halls.

13:00 — Lunch, then Jingshan

Walk five minutes off Jingshanqian Street before you eat; the restaurants directly opposite the north gate charge tour-coach prices for ordinary food. Then ¥2 and a ten-minute climb up the artificial hill made from the earth dug out of the palace moat, for the best view in central Beijing: the whole Forbidden City in one frame with the axis running straight through it. Jingshan in detail.

15:00 — Beihai Park

Fifteen minutes north-west of Jingshan. The ¥20 through ticket adds Jade Island and the Round City to the ¥10 park entry, and the White Dagoba on the island is the shot everyone takes. In summer, a boat on the lake is ¥100–200 an hour plus a refundable deposit and is a genuinely good hour. On three days you can afford Beihai properly, which the two-day version cannot. Beihai Park.

17:00 — Shichahai and the Drum Tower

North from Beihai’s back gate into the lakes. Shichahai and Houhai in the hour before dark are the best free thing in Beijing: willows, swimmers or skaters depending on the month, and hutongs behind the bar strip that are still ordinary neighbourhoods. Skip the rickshaws — the circuits are a short loop sold as a tour. The Drum and Bell Towers close the axis a few minutes north; the drum performance runs roughly every half hour and the staircase is steep. More on the lakes.

18:45 — Peking duck

Siji Minfu at around ¥259 a whole duck, ¥159 a half, is the right call for a first duck dinner: consistently crisp, no tourist surcharge, and busy enough to need either a 17:30 arrival or a ticket and a wait. Li Qun is the hutong alternative at about ¥298. Quanjude is the famous one and the one your hotel will book, and at roughly ¥300 a head the quality has not matched the name for years. All of them ranked.

Day two — Mutianyu

Mutianyu, not Badaling. Badaling is closer and the G-train from Beijing North reaches it in 27 minutes for ¥30–80, which is genuinely tempting — and it is also the section that takes the coach fleets and the state visits, so on any holiday you are queueing on the ramparts. Mutianyu is 90 minutes each way, restored, wooded, has a cable car and a toboggan run, and is quiet enough to hear wind. On a three-day trip you have the time; spend it.

07:15 — The bus from Dongzhimen

Departures at 08:00 and 10:00, with a 12:00 added in peak season. Take the 08:00. ¥80 return for transport alone, ¥220–280 bundled with entrance and cable car, last bus back at 17:00 and 16:00 in winter. The DIY route — bus 916 Express to Huairou then local bus h23 — is ¥35–40 return and adds about 45 minutes each way plus a transfer to get right in Chinese. Every option is laid out in getting to the Great Wall.

09:45 — On the Wall

Shuttle from the car park to the base ¥20, entry ¥45. Cable car ¥100 one way or ¥140 return to tower 14; chairlift-and-toboggan combo ¥140 to tower 6; walking up is free and costs you 40 minutes of steps you will want later.

The route worth doing: cable car to tower 14, east to tower 20 where the restoration stops and the wall goes steep and wild, back west along the ridge to tower 6, toboggan down. Three hours, the best-preserved stretch, the most dramatic gradient, and a luge at the end that nobody regrets. The shorter version — tower 14 to tower 20 and back — is ninety minutes and still worth the day.

Bring water and eat at the base or from a bag; there is no good lunch on the ramparts. If crowds are the concern, the timings that work mostly reduce to catching the 08:00 bus. With children, the family version of the day is worth reading first. And if the Wall is the whole reason you came, the longer hikes are a different trip.

16:30 — Back at Dongzhimen

Two stops on Line 2 to Yonghegong and the Lama Temple, ¥25, free incense at the gate, and an eighteen-metre Maitreya carved from a single sandalwood trunk that is worth the detour on its own — but last entry is mid-afternoon, so this only works on a 15:00 bus. Check the closing time the same morning. If you are back too late, the alternatives are Nanluoguxiang and its side alleys, Ghost Street for late hotpot, or a show — Peking opera at ¥120–380 for a 70 to 90 minute tourist-circuit performance with subtitles, or acrobatics, which is the better bet with tired legs. Lama Temple in detail.

Day three — the two great gardens

This is the day that three days buys, and it is worth defending against the temptation to fill it with a day trip instead. The Ming Tombs, Gubei Water Town and Chengde are all real options and all of them turn day three into a second day of coach travel; the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace are both inside the city, both enormous, and both are places where local Beijing actually goes.

07:00 — The Temple of Heaven, at opening

Do not treat this as a monument visit. The park opens before the halls do, and for the first two hours it belongs to several thousand retired Beijingers doing tai chi, ballroom dancing, jianzi, water calligraphy on the paving, choral singing under the Long Corridor and card games at every table. It is the single most quietly astonishing hour in the city and it is over by about half nine.

Buy the through ticket — ¥34 in peak season from 1 April to 31 October, ¥28 off-season. The ¥15 park-only ticket does not include the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, which is the building on the postcard, so the cheap ticket is a false economy unless you are only here for the park life. Two and a half hours covers the Hall of Prayer, the Echo Wall, the Circular Mound Altar and a slow walk between them. Temple of Heaven guide.

10:00 — Cross the city

Line 5 north from Tiantandongmen, change at Dongdan for Line 1, change again for Line 4 north to Beigongmen. It is about an hour with the changes, ¥6 or so, and it is the longest single transit of the three days. Eat before you go in — the Summer Palace’s internal restaurants are captive-audience pricing. Subway guide.

11:30 — The Summer Palace

Enter at Beigongmen, the north gate, rather than the east: you come in over Suzhou Street, climb the back of Longevity Hill, arrive at the Tower of Buddhist Incense with Kunming Lake opening below you, and then walk down and along the Long Corridor with the lake beside you. Entering at the east gate reverses that and puts the climb at the end, when you are done.

The through ticket is ¥60 in peak season, ¥50 off, and it covers the extras that otherwise nickel-and-dime you: the Tower of Buddhist Incense at ¥10, Suzhou Street at ¥10, the Garden of Virtue and Harmony at ¥5, the Summer Palace Museum at ¥20. Buy it. Four hours is right; three is rushed and five is possible if you take a boat, which rents from about ¥200 an hour with a ¥600 deposit, sales 08:30 to 16:30.

The honest verdict on the Marble Boat: it is a large stone folly that photographs well and takes four minutes. Do not walk the length of the lake to see it. The Seventeen-Arch Bridge and Nanhu Island at the far end, on the other hand, are worth the extra forty minutes if the light is good. Summer Palace guide.

16:30 — The evening

You come out tired at the wrong end of the city, so pick by what you feel like rather than by what is nearest.

• 798 Art District — Bauhaus factory sheds turned into galleries, free to walk, individual exhibitions ¥30–120, and most of it shuts around six. Only works if you leave the Summer Palace by four. 798.
• Sanlitun — the modern city, bars, and a version of Beijing that the first two days entirely omit. Worth an evening precisely because it is nothing like the rest of the trip. Sanlitun.
• A night market or Wangfujing — for the last shopping. Night markets, Wangfujing.
• Nothing. A third-day evening in a courtyard hotel with a beer is a legitimate use of a trip. You have walked about 28 kilometres.

The alternative day three

If crossing the city twice sounds like a poor use of a final day — and for some people it is — swap the Summer Palace for a compact northern loop and keep the whole day inside the second ring road.

That version walks less, costs about ¥90 in entries rather than ¥120, and trades the Summer Palace — which is genuinely one of the great imperial gardens — for depth in one neighbourhood. It is the better day three for a second visit, for anyone travelling with small children, and for a rainy forecast. Confucius Temple, the Dongsi hutongs.

Adjustments you may need

If one of your days is a Monday

The Forbidden City is closed and there is no way round it. Put the Wall on the Monday and shuffle the other two days back. If your Monday is day three, run day three’s alternative version — the Temple of Heaven, the Lama Temple and the hutongs are all open — and move the axis forward.

If it rains, or the air is poor

Beijing’s air is much better than its reputation: 2025 averaged 27 µg/m³ of PM2.5, the lowest on record, with a single heavy-pollution day in the year. When a bad one lands, swap the Wall day for the National Museum of China, which is free with a compulsory advance passport reservation and will absorb three hours, plus the Forbidden City’s indoor galleries. Compare µg/m³ rather than AQI, since Chinese and US scales read the same particulate differently. Air quality in practice.

If you are travelling with children

Cut day one’s Beihai, cut day three’s Summer Palace back to the north gate and the lake shore, and keep the toboggan on day two — it is the thing they will talk about. Beijing with children.

If your dates land in Golden Week

1 to 7 October is the busiest week of the Chinese year, hotel prices roughly double, and every site on this itinerary is at capacity. If you cannot move the dates, book everything the moment it releases, start each day an hour earlier than written, and consider swapping Mutianyu for a quieter section. When to come.

Where to base yourself

One hotel, three nights, no moving. Dongcheng around Wangfujing puts day one on foot and days two and three one change away. A courtyard hotel in the Shichahai hutongs is slower to get out of and much more pleasant to come back to. Sanlitun and the CBD suit a longer trip and cost you transit time on a three-day one. Our neighbourhood comparison sets out the trade-off, and there is more on courtyard hotels and picking a base.

What three days still leaves out

Yuanmingyuan, the ruined Old Summer Palace next door to the intact one, at ¥25 and worth half a day. The Ming Tombs. Any day trip — Gubei Water Town, Chengde, Tianjin at 30 minutes and ¥55 by high-speed train. The 798 district properly rather than as an evening scrap. The Fragrant Hills in leaf season. Universal Studios, which is a whole day and ¥418–748. And the wilder Wall at Jinshanling or Jiankou, which is the single best reason to come back.

Three days is not short. It covers the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and two evenings in the hutongs, which is a complete first visit by any reasonable definition. What it does not have is slack — one bad-air day or one missed booking and something falls out. Build in the earliest starts you can bear on days two and three, and the rest holds together.

A fourth day changes this plan less than you would think in content and more than you would think in comfort: it lets the Great Wall float to whichever morning has the clearest air instead of being pinned to day two. The four-day version keeps these three days intact and compares five ways to spend the extra one. The main itinerary page compares every length side by side.

It is worth knowing what sits either side of three days. Two days drops the Summer Palace and the temples; five add a day trip and an afternoon with nothing in it. A weekend version reorders the same ground around Saturday opening hours, and the family plan re-paces the whole thing around children.

Frequently asked questions