Summer Palace, Beijing

The Summer Palace in Beijing is a masterwork of Chinese landscape garden design, covering 290 hectares—three times the area of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven. Its 700-meter Long Corridor, painted with over 14,000 scenes, is the longest covered walkway in any Chinese imperial garden. Kunming Lake, which occupies three-quarters of the site, was excavated by 100,000 laborers in 1750, moving 1.5 million cubic meters of earth. The Marble Boat extends 36 meters, while the 60-meter-tall Tower of Buddhist Incense commands views of the entire complex. This site’s artificial mountain, Longevity Hill, rises 60 meters—20 meters higher than any natural hill in Luoyang’s Longmen Grottoes area.