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Old Summer Palace
- Ruins of Yuanmingyuan

Index | Architecture | History

Located in the northern part of Haidian District in Beijing, Yuanmingyuan (Garden of perfect Brightness) is also called the Old Summer Palace by Western tourists, and is distinguished from the Summer Palace in this way.

History
The construction of the park buildings started in the 18th year of Emperor Kangxi in Qing Dynasty (1709A.D.), went through six emperors and finally finished the building of Yuanmingyuan. In October 1860, the Anglo-French forces sacked and looted Yuanmingyuan and burned it to the ground. More information...

Former lay out and architecture
Yuanmingyuan is composed of three comparatively independent but interconnected gardens: Yuanmingyuan (Garden of perfect Brightness), Changchunyuan (Garden of Eternal Spring), and Qichunyuan (Garden of Blossoming Spring). The Yuanmingyuan Park covers a total area of 350 acres and the architecture area of 160, 000 square meters, 10,000 square meters larger than the Forbidden City. More information...

Culture
Yuanmingyuan was also an imperial museum with a vast collection of cultural treasures. The French writer Victor Hugo once remarked, "With all its treasures, Notre Dame in Paris is no match for Yuanmingyuan, that enormous and magnificent museum in the East." Furniture made of red sandalwood decorated the numerous halls in which countless rare cultural relics were on display. As one of the four most famous imperial libraries, the Wenyuan Hall (Hall of Literary Profundity) in the garden originally housed such precious ancient books as The Complete Library of Four Branches of Book, Gems of the Complete Library of Four Branches of Books, and The Completed Collection of Graphs and Writings of Ancient and Modern Time.