The Summer Palace

Summer Palace is the largest and best-preserved imperial garden of China; it was originally a Qing dynasty emperor’s palace and garden. In addition, it is known as the royal garden museum. When the Summer Palace was built, it learnt some lessons from Jiangnan gardens’ design and techniques in order to create a large natural landscape palace. Many people went there to appreciate how gorgeous it is and the archaic architectural style it has.

The Summer Palace was found in 1750, and built in 1764, the area of Summer Palace is ​​290 hectares, contains about three-quarters of water. The main lake Kunming Lake in the Summer Palace is about 220 hectares. There is a 17-hole bridge lying on the lake, the three islands on the lake also has three different forms of classical architecture. The 17-hole bridge that built on Kunming Lake is very famous, the overall bridge 150 meters long and eight meters wide. The bridge is named because there are seventeen holes on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is white and made of stone, which makes it looks beautiful on the lake; moreover, there are more than five hundred different looking carved stone lions stand on the bridge. The 17-hole bridge is also the largest stone bridge in the Summer Palace.

The main buildings are located on Front Mountain, which near the palace’s main entrance, so it is more convenient to start the tour here. The Front Mountain faced south; you can see the overlooking of the Kunming Lake on the mountain. Those craftsmen who built the buildings on the Front Mountain focused a lot at here, such as the Buddha Pavilion.

Buddha Pavilion is a magnificent religious building; it’s the center of the architectural layout of Summer Palace. The name of Buddha Pavilion is in praise of the Buddhism, and it is built with Liuhe Pagoda in Hangzhou as a mode. The Buddha Pavilion used red, green and gold as main color, and it’s more colorful when we see it closely. The Buddha Pavilion built in the 20-meters platform made by stone; it has eight sides, three levels and four eaves. The pavilion is forty-one meters high; there are eight wood pillars straight through the top in the pavilion, that makes the Buddha Pavilion as hard as we can imagine.

After visiting the Summer Palace, where everything is so gorgeous that makes people can’t forget. It has both magnificent momentums and man-made natural beauty. With those artistic architecture reflects the wisdom of ancient Chinese we should cherish those artwork that ancient people left to us.