Beijing, section by section.
Which stretch of Great Wall suits your legs. What the Forbidden City really needs booking. Where the hutong food is still cooked for neighbours. Every Beijing tour, priced and ranked.
Beijing keeps nine sections of Great Wall. You get one day.
Every Great Wall tour →
The sections are two to three hours apart and nothing alike: one is rebuilt and easy, one is on a commuter line and heaving, one is half-collapsed and photographs like nowhere else. Pick the wall first, then the tour.
Mutianyu: cable car up, toboggan down
Twenty-two towers of solid rebuilt wall, a chairlift that skips the climb and a metal toboggan run back down. It is the section almost every guide sends first-timers to, and it earns that.
Badaling: the one on the train line
The first section opened to visitors and still the busiest: wide ramparts, handrails, a station underneath it. Go at opening or in winter, or accept that you will be walking in a queue.
Jinshanling: half rebuilt, half left alone
The wall thins out, the render falls away, and the ridge runs off to the horizon with a watchtower on every rise. Two and a half hours each way, and worth every one of them.
Book these before you land in Beijing.
Most of Beijing can wait until you are standing in it. These four cannot: they run on named-ticket releases, capped time slots and permits that have nothing to do with when your flight gets in.
- 01Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets IncludedEntry is by named ticket tied to your passport, released in a short window before the date. Peak-season slots are gone the morning they open.
- 02All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great WallThe square has its own advance registration with passport details. There is no walk-up gate and no same-day fix.
- 03Beijing Private Transfer to Jinshanling or Simatai Great WallThe only stretch of wall lit after dark sells timed, capped slots — and it is a two-hour drive from the city, so the day has to be built around it.
- 04Private Hiking Tour From Jiankou To MutianyuThe unrestored wall has no ticket office and no railings. Going up means going with someone who already knows the way down.
What Beijing books more than anything else.
Every review →Ranked by the number of travellers who have actually been and rated it — not by what anyone wants to sell you.
1
Mutianyu Great Wall Tours with Options
Mutianyu Great Wall day trip with MuBus: skip ticket lines, live EN/RU/ES guides, 4-5 hours at the Wall, tea snacks, optional buffet.
From · $19
Read our review →
2
Forbidden City Tour(Group/Private)-Tickets Included
from $4
3
T-Square & Forbidden City Group or Private Tour
from $17
4
All-Inclusive Tour: Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Great Wall
from $128
5
MuBus: Mutianyu Great Wall ENG/ESP/RUS Guided Bus Tour
from $20
6
4-Hour Small Group Tour to Forbidden City with Entry Tickets
from $15
7
Tiananmen Square Registration Service(Ticket)
from $3.99
8
Beijing Full Day Tours: Tiananmen Sq, Forbidden City, Great Wall
from $99
Beijing was laid out along one straight line.
Seven and a half kilometres, dead north-south, drawn before the city had walls. The Forbidden City sits in the middle of it, Jingshan’s hill was piled up to look down on it, and the great altars flank its southern end. Walk the line and the city stops being a grid of ring roads.
What a day in Beijing actually costs.
Every reviewed tour sorted by price. The gap between a ticket and a private car is bigger here than almost anywhere.
Entry tickets, theatre seats, hutong walks and the registration services that get you through a gate.
The standard shared day out: a bus to Mutianyu, a food night, a duck dinner with a guide who orders for you.
Your own driver and guide for the day, wild-wall hikes with permits, and the two-section wall runs that need the hours.
Beijing at courtyard height.
All hutong walks →Behind the ring roads there is still a grey-brick city of one-storey courtyards, shared taps and lanes too narrow for a car. The good walks eat their way through it.
Beijing Hutong Walking Food and Beer Tour at Hidden Restaurants
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Hidden Gems Guided Food Tour with Beer and Tastings
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Temple Heaven, Lama Temple, Summer Palace & Peking Duck Bus Tour
Read our review →Beijing’s three stage nights are not the same show.
Acrobatics, kung fu and Peking opera get sold interchangeably and share almost nothing — not the theatre, not the length, not who should be in the seat.
The Acrobatics
An hour of contortion, plate-spinning and the pagoda of bowls, performed by people who started training at six. Nothing is narrated and nothing needs to be, which makes it the one Beijing evening that works with tired children and jet lag.
- 1Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatic Show Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 461 reviews
- 2Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatic Show Tickets Official Booking★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 218 reviews
- 3Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatics Show Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 141 reviews
The Kung Fu Stage Show
This is theatre with a plot — a boy sent to a monastery, growing up through the fight scenes — not a martial-arts demonstration. Choreographed, scored and lit, closer to a musical than a tournament, and the reason people either love it or expected something else.
- 1Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatic Show Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 461 reviews
- 2Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatic Show Tickets Official Booking★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 218 reviews
- 3Red Theatre Beijing Acrobatics Show Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 141 reviews
The Opera Night
Painted faces, a two-string fiddle and a vocal register that takes twenty minutes to get used to. Tourist programmes run short excerpts with surtitles and tea at the tables, which is the humane way in; a full traditional bill runs for hours.
- 1Traditional Cultural Show Peking Opera Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 66 reviews
- 2Liyuan Theatre Beijing Opera Show Tickets★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · 60 reviews
- 3Beijing LiYuan Theatre VIP Seats Opera Show with Private Transfer Service★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 43 reviews
A Beijing layover is long enough to reach the wall.
China’s transit-without-visa rules give most travellers days, not hours, and an industry has grown up around it: airport pickup, a stamped exit, the wall, the airport again. The one thing to check first is which airport you land at. Capital is north-east of the city, Daxing is far to the south, and they are nothing like the same drive.
By section of wall — and how far each is from Beijing
Mutianyu348 tours
Badaling64 tours
Jinshanling70 tours
Simatai37 tours
Huanghuacheng34 tours
Jiankou22 tours
Juyongguan18 tours
Gubeikou14 tours
Wall hikes42 tours- Every Great Wall trip →
By kind of day — what are you actually doing in Beijing?
The days that start before the ring roads wake up.
Gubei Water Town
Longqing GorgeThe Beijing days everything else gets planned around.
The wall, the palace, the lanes, the duck and the acrobats. Five or six bookings carry a first visit; these are the lists to choose them from.
The newest Beijing reviews.
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Beijing Half Day Walking Tour-Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City
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1-Day Beijing private English speaking guide with driver service
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Flexible Private Layover Beijing Night Sightseeing with English Speaking Driver
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Private Day Trip to Huaibei International Ski Resort and Mutianyu Great Wall
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2-Day Customizable Beijing Highlight Tour with Airport Transfer Option
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1-Day Beijing Private tour: Mutianyu Great Wall and Summer Palace
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1-Way Private Transfer Service between Tianjin cruise Port and Beijing hotels
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Private Day Tour Of Jinshanling Great Wall From Beijing
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Beijing Street Breakfast Tour with Temple of Heaven and Pearl Market Visit
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lama Temple Entry Ticket Reservation And Optional Items
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