Location 

The excursion to Beijing will also allow some sightseeing besides the planned lectures and meetings with company managers and attorneys-at-law. During your stay in China's capital city, you will visit the famous Tian'anmen Square, the Forbidden City, and the Great Wall.

Tian'anmen Square is located at the heart of Beijing. In the south of this public plaza, you will find the entrance to the Forbidden City, while in the north you will see the Tian'anmen Gate, which means means "the Gate of Heavenly Peace". The Square was created in 1417, and originally had dimensions of 880 metres north-south and 500 metres east-west. In the early years of the plaza the gate was named the Chengtianmen, meaning the “Gate that bears the Heavens”. It was damaged by a lightning strike in 1457, and left unrepaired until 1465. Later, in 1644, the rebels of Li Zicheng burned the gate down. In the early years of the Qing dynasty, it was rebuilt and given its modern name. In the Qing and Ming eras, the Tian'anmen was not a public square - instead the area was occupied by the offices of imperial ministries. During the Boxer Rebellion, these buildings were damaged beyond repair, and so the area was cleared again. This was the beginning of the Tian'anmen Square you will find today. In 1949, the square was enlarged to 100 acres and its openness is interrupted only by the 100-foot high Monument to the People’s Heroes and Mao Zedong’s mausoleum. The Hall of the People is on the western side of the Square. In the east side, you will find the National Museum of Chinese History. Changan Avenue, which is used for parades, lies between Tiananmen Gate and the Square.

Not far away from the Tian'anmen Square, just to the south of the plaza in fact, you will find the Forbidden City. This city was the Chinese imperial palace from the mid-Ming era to the end of the Qing Dynasty. Hence, it is located right in the middle of the Beijing. Today, it is called the Palace Museum, but it was the home of the Emperor and his household for almost five centuries. For all that time it served as the ceremonial and political centre of Chinese government. Built between 1406 and 1420, the Forbidden City consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 rooms, and covers 720,000 square meters. On your way through the outer and inner city of the palace museum, you will see traditional Chinese palatial architecture. Furthermore, the palace museum holds an extensive collection of artwork and artifacts which derive from the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1987, the Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site, and it is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.

The next sight to see on your tour through Beijing and its hinterland will be the Great Wall. It was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. Its original name was “the long wall of 10,000 li”. It was built, rebuilt, and maintained between the 5th century BC and the 16th century to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire during the rule of successive dynasties. Several walls were erected from the 5th century BC which – together – are referred to as the Great Wall of China. The most famous wall was built between 220 BC and 200 BC by the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang. Very little remains of that wall; and it runs much further north than the current wall which was built under the Ming Dynasty.
The current wall is the world's longest man-made structure, stretching over approximately 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) from Shanghaiguan in the east to Lop Nur in the west, along an arc that roughly marks the southern edge of Inner Mongolia. It is also the largest man-made structure ever built in terms of both surface area and mass. As you will see on your visit, the steps are very steep and high in some parts, and so tourists are easily exhausted trying to climb it.