The Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in China, built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 6th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire from Xiongnu attacks during the rule of successive dynasties. Several walls, referred to as the Great Wall of China, were built since the 5th century BC. The most famous is the wall built between 220–200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang; little of it remains; it was much farther north than the current wall, which was built during the Ming Dynasty.  The Great Wall stretches over approximately 6,400 km (4,000 miles) from Shanhaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly delineates the southern edge of Inner Mongolia, but stretches to over 6,700 km (4,160 miles) in total. At its peak, the Ming Wall was guarded by more than one million men.  It has been estimated that somewhere in the range of 2 to 3 million Chinese died as part of the centuries-long project of building the wall.

The Summer Palace is a popular place for both foreign travelers and local residents. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometers, three quarters of which is the Kunming Lake. The main building is the lyrically named Hall of Benevolence & Longevity. In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List and declared the Summer Palace an “outstanding expression of the creative art of Chinese landscape garden design, incorporating the works of humankind and nature in a harmonious whole.”

The Beijing Zoo is in the western part of Beijing.  The grounds combine cultivated flower gardens with stretches of natural scenery, including dense groves of trees, stretches of grassland, a small stream, lotus pools and small hills dotted with pavilions and halls.  The Beijing Zoo mainly exhibits wild and rare animals of China. The Giant Pandas are one of the most popular exhibits, but other popular animals including the Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey, Manchurian tigers, white-lipped deer, yaks from Tibet, enormous sea turtles, polar bears from the North Pole, kangaroo from Australia, and zebra from Africa. The zoo is also a center of zoological research that collects and breeds rare animals from various continents.

Yonghe Gong is a temple and monastery of the Geluk School of Tibetan Buddhism located in the northeastern part of Beijing. It is one of the largest and most important Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in the world. The building and the artworks of the temple combine Han Chinese and Tibetan styles. Building work on the Yonghegong Temple started in 1694 during the Qing Dynasty. It originally served as an official residence for court eunuchs. It was then converted into the court of the Prince Yong (Yin Zhen), a son of the Kangxi Emperor and himself the future Yongzheng Emperor. After Yongzheng’s ascension to the throne in 1722, half of the building was converted into a lamasery, a monastery for monks of Tibetan Buddhism. The other half remained an imperial palace.

Tiananmen Square is the large plaza near the center of Beijing, named after the Tiananmen (literally, the Gate of Heavenly Peace) which sits to its north, separating it from the Forbidden City. The square covers 40.5 hectares, which makes it the largest open-urban square in the world. Used as a massive gathering place since its inception, its flatness is broken only by the 38-meter (125 ft) high Monument to the People’s Heroes completed in 1958, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong completed in 1977. The square lies between two ancient, massive gates: the Tiananmen to the north and the Zhengyangmen, better known as Qianmen to the south. Along the west side of the Square is the Great Hall of the People. Along the east side is the National Museum of China.