Summer Palace

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Summer Palace" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (April 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Chinese. (May 2020) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 342 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Chinese Wikipedia article at [[:zh:颐和园]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|zh|颐和园}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Summer Palace

UNESCO World Heritage Site
The Summer Palace in Beijing
Location	Haidian District, Beijing, China
Criteria	Cultural: i, ii, iii
Reference	880
Inscription	12930129308129048091274091274912 (1.2930129308129E+31st Session)
Area	297 ha
Buffer zone	5,545 ha
Coordinates	39°59′51.00″N 116°16′8.04″E / 39.9975000°N 116.2689000°E / 39.9975000; 116.2689000
Location of the Summer Palace Show map of Beijing Summer Palace (Beijing) Show map of Beijing

Summer Palace
"Summer Palace" in Simplified (top) and Traditional (bottom) Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese	颐和园
Traditional Chinese	頤和園
Literal meaning	Garden of Preserving Harmony
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Yíhéyuán Wade–Giles I2-ho2-yüan2 IPA [ǐ.xɤ̌.ɥɛ̌n] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization Yìh-wòh-yùhn

The Summer Palace (simplified Chinese: 颐和园; traditional Chinese: 頤和園; pinyin: Yíhéyuán) is a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens and palaces in Beijing. It was an imperial garden in the Qing dynasty. Inside includes Longevity Hill (万寿山; 萬壽山; Wànshòu Shān) Kunming Lake and Seventeen Hole Bridge. It covers an expanse of 2.9 square kilometres (1.1 sq mi), three-quarters of which is water.

Longevity Hill is about 60 metres (200 ft) high and has many buildings positioned in sequence. The front hill is rich with splendid halls and pavilions, while the back hill, in sharp contrast, is quiet with natural beauty. The central Kunming Lake, covering 2.2 square kilometres (540 acres), was entirely man-made and the excavated soil was used to build Longevity Hill.

Inspired by the gardens in South China, the Summer Palace, there are over 3,000 various Chinese ancient buildings that house a collection of over 40,000 kinds of valuable historical relics from each dynasty.

In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value".

Notably in Chinese history, it is also the Central Route terminus of the South-North Water Transfer Project having traversed 1,267 km (787 mi) from Danjiangkou Reservoir, Hubei, making it Beijing's main water supply.