Yuanmingyuan Park

The garden the emperors loved most

For a century and a half the Yuanmingyuan, the "Garden of Perfect Brightness", was the true heart of the Qing empire. Begun in 1709 under the Kangxi Emperor and vastly expanded by his grandson the Qianlong Emperor, it grew into a complex of three linked gardens, Yuanmingyuan, Changchunyuan and Qichunyuan, spread across some 350 hectares in the north-western suburbs of Beijing, five times the size of the Forbidden City. Later emperors preferred it to the Forbidden City itself, ruling from among its lakes rather than from the formal palace in the city centre.

A Garden of Gardens

Europeans who saw it called it the "Versailles of the East" and the "Garden of Gardens", and the names were not idle flattery. Hundreds of scenes were composed across the grounds: winding waterways and lotus ponds modelled on the classical landscapes of Jiangnan, artificial hills, pavilions, halls and libraries, each framing a particular view or mood. Most extraordinary of all was the Xiyanglou, a suite of European-style stone buildings designed with the help of Jesuits at the Qing court, complete with fountains, a great waterwork, and a labyrinth. It was a place where Chinese and Western art met on equal terms, and it doubled as an imperial museum, crammed with books, paintings and treasures.

1860: the fire

Then, in October 1860, it was destroyed. During the closing act of the Second Opium War, a party of British and French envoys sent to negotiate had been captured and tortured, and many died. In retaliation, and to force the Qing court to terms, the British High Commissioner, Lord Elgin, ordered the palace burned. Allied troops first looted the grounds and then set them alight; the fires are said to have burned for days. Countless artefacts were carried off, and many are still scattered through museums around the world today. For China the event remains one of the deepest wounds of the modern era, a symbol of the humiliations of the century that followed.

Beauty in the ruins

What survives is precisely that: ruins, deliberately preserved. The broken marble columns of the Dashuifa, the grand Western-style waterwork, still stand tilted against the sky and have become the emblem of the whole site. Around them the park has softened into something quietly beautiful, a vast landscape of lakes, willow-lined paths, lotus beds and grassy islands where the outlines of the vanished gardens can still be traced. It is a place that holds two feelings at once: the grief of what was lost, and the calm of a garden slowly reclaimed by water and time.

Visiting

Yuanmingyuan sits in Beijing's Haidian District, just east of the present-day Summer Palace at Yiheyuan, with which it is often confused; the two are separate, and the intact, restored Yiheyuan makes an instructive contrast to these ruins. Most visitors spend three to four hours here, focusing on the Western-style ruins and the museum. Come in late spring or autumn, when the lotus is in flower or the leaves are turning, and an audio guide or the on-site AR displays will bring the lost palace back to life far better than the bare stones can alone.

Location: Haidian District, north-west Beijing, east of the present-day Summer Palace (Yiheyuan). Built: From 1709 (Kangxi) and greatly expanded under Qianlong; three gardens over 350 hectares. Destroyed: Burned and looted in October 1860 by Anglo-French forces in the Second Opium War. Icon: The broken marble columns of the Dashuifa in the European-style Xiyanglou. Best time: Late spring for lotus, or autumn for colour; allow 3-4 hours.