5 Days in Beijing: First-Timer Plan
Five days is where Beijing really opens up. You still get the palace and the wall on the front end, but now there’s room for the emperors’ actual tombs, an art district built inside an old weapons factory, and enough slack in the schedule that a slow lunch doesn’t blow the whole afternoon. Only have four days? Our 4-day plan covers the same core minus this fifth day; six days and our 6-day itinerary adds a second Great Wall section.
Book these before you go:
- Forbidden City tickets release online exactly 7 days ahead and sell out for weekends
- A Mutianyu Great Wall tour if you’d rather skip arranging your own driver
- A hotel in Dongcheng near Wangfujing; check rates on Agoda before September and October fill up
| Day | Focus | Time needed |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiananmen Square + Forbidden City + Jingshan Park | Full day |
| 2 | Great Wall at Mutianyu | Full day (incl. drive) |
| 3 | Temple of Heaven + hutongs + Qianmen | Full day |
| 4 | Summer Palace + Lama Temple + Sanlitun | Full day |
| 5 | Ming Tombs + 798 Art District | Half day + half day |
Day 1: The Imperial Core
Tiananmen Square starts things off, and it needs its own advance reservation through the WeChat mini-program, booked one to seven days ahead, passport ready at the security check. The open ground alone is staggering, flanked by Mao’s mausoleum and the National Museum of China.
How Far Ahead Should You Book the Forbidden City?
Exactly seven days out, online at 8pm Beijing time, real-name and passport-required. There’s no ticket window and no walk-up entry at all, so treat this booking as the first task on your whole trip checklist, not something to sort after you land.
Walk north into the Forbidden City next. Set aside three to four hours; it’s closed Mondays outside holiday weeks, and the courtyards genuinely keep coming past where you expect the palace to end. Watch for the bronze fire vats standing in every courtyard, big enough to bathe in, and the little glazed figures marching along each roofline, more figures on a hall meant more status for whoever used it. Finish the day at Jingshan Park just behind the walls, where the climb to Wanchun Pavilion gets you the best rooftop view in Beijing for a couple of yuan, ideally timed for sunset. Grab dinner on Wangfujing or in a nearby hutong.
Day 2: The Great Wall at Mutianyu
Give this its own full day, drive included, roughly ninety minutes each way. My one real opinion on Beijing sightseeing: skip Badaling. It’s the closest section and the most photographed, which is exactly why it’s also the most tour-bus-clogged stretch of wall anywhere near the city. Mutianyu gets you well-restored watchtowers, a cable car up (check current hours on the official Mutianyu site ) so you arrive with legs still fresh, and a toboggan run down that ends up being the best part of the day. Budget three to four hours on the wall itself, get there early for thinner crowds, and head back for a proper Peking duck dinner once you’re off the mountain.
Day 3: Temple, Hutongs, and Old Streets
The Temple of Heaven opens the morning, its round Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests rising off tiered marble terraces unlike anything else you’ll see in the city. The surrounding park fills with locals playing cards, practicing tai chi, or moving through slow fan routines, and it’s worth ten quiet minutes on a bench just watching it happen.
Spend the afternoon in the hutongs. Nanluoguxiang is the famous one, worth a look but heavy on craft coffee and souvenir stalls now. Wudaoying and the lanes around Houhai give you the quieter version, grey-brick courtyard homes and bicycle bells instead. Close the day at Qianmen and the Dashilan alleys running off it, a restored pedestrian street with century-old shops selling silk and handmade shoes, polished but genuinely old underneath the polish.
Day 4: Summer Palace and Lama Temple
Spend the morning and into the afternoon at the Summer Palace , the sprawling lake-and-pavilion retreat where Qing emperors escaped the summer heat. Climb Longevity Hill for the view back over Kunming Lake, then walk the painted Long Corridor along the shoreline, easily a half-day-plus stop.
Head to the Lama Temple (Yonghegong) in the late afternoon, a working Tibetan Buddhist monastery thick with incense smoke and genuinely striking statuary, including a towering Buddha carved from a single piece of sandalwood. Book your timed entry online or via WeChat the night before, this now applies to every visitor, foreign or local. Close the day in Sanlitun, where Taikoo Li’s glass towers and the bar street nearby make for an easy, lively dinner and a drink.
Day 5: Ming Tombs and 798 Art District
Do You Need a Reservation for the Ming Tombs Like You Do for the Palace?
No. Unlike the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square, the Ming Tombs run on standard walk-up entry, no advance booking or passport check required. Buy your ticket on-site and give the complex a genuine half-day rather than the rushed hour most bundled Great Wall tours allow.
Give the Ming Tombs a dedicated half-day rather than the rushed add-on most tour buses turn it into. Walk the Sacred Way first, the long approach lined with stone animals and officials standing guard over dynasties long gone, then visit Changling, the largest and best-preserved tomb in the complex.
Spend the afternoon at 798 Art District , a former 1950s weapons factory north of the center now packed with contemporary galleries, street art on old brick walls, and a completely different energy from anywhere else on this itinerary. It’s free to just walk around, and UCCA is worth the ticket price if you want one proper gallery visit. Getting there is easy too, ride the metro out to Wangjing South on Line 14 and finish with a short taxi or walk. It’s the best possible closing note for a trip built mostly around dynasties and stone, ending instead on whatever Beijing’s artists are doing right now, spray paint and installation pieces a few hundred meters from where the factory once turned out electronics for the military. Combining this with more of China? Our Beijing-and-beyond guide covers the visa and payment setup this in-city plan leaves out.