Summer Palace Tickets and Beijing Day Tours
Twenty listings at a weighted 4.748 over 3,758 reviews, twelve of them eight hours or longer. Simple entry is 30 CNY, the combined ticket 60, and the park opens two hours before the enclosures inside it do.
The Summer Palace is administered as a park, and that changes what a ticket means. Simple entry is 30 CNY from 1 April to 31 October and 20 CNY for the rest of the year, and it opens the grounds: Longevity Hill, the shore of Kunming Lake, the pavilions along it. A combined ticket at 60 CNY, or 50 in winter, adds three enclosures that the simple ticket keeps shut, and those three are the only paying interiors the published price list names. The gates open at six in the morning. There is no weekly closing day for the park itself, which makes this the one imperial site in Beijing that a Monday cannot take away from you.
The catalogue treats this place very differently from the way the park does. Twenty listings hang off it, and the median length of one is 480 minutes. Twelve of the twenty run eight hours or more and only four finish inside two, which means most of the market treats the Summer Palace as one stop inside a day that also collects the Lama Temple, the Temple of Heaven, a hutong and sometimes a panda house. The prices follow: the median is 86.26 EUR once the two listings under 10 EUR are set aside, the first quartile is 68.31 and the third 123.56, with the dearest at 192.66. A quarter of everything here starts at 68 EUR, which is a lot for a 30 CNY park.
The cheap exception exists and it is worth naming: a 60-minute entrance ticket with an optional guided service at 6.90 EUR, rated 4.5 across 137 reviews, which sits under the 4.748 this category averages. It is the only listing here that resembles what the park itself sells, and the fact that a single product out of twenty does the obvious thing says more about the market in Beijing than about the park.
Three things decide whether a Summer Palace ticket is bought well: the arithmetic of the combined ticket, the two-hour gap at the start of every day, and the one step of the booking that a foreign visitor may not be able to complete alone. All twenty listings here cancel free, which is worth knowing before any of it, since nothing about this booking has to be final at the moment it is made.
Buy the Ticket at the Gate, and Look for the Sign Saying Roy Li
No advance ticket needed here: bring your passport and cash or Alipay and buy at the gate. The guide covers the garden of 1750 that burned in 1860.
Eighteen Metres of Buddha from One Tree, and a Duck Lunch After
Two hours at the Temple of Heaven, the Lama Temple and its single-trunk Buddha, then 2.9 square kilometres of the Summer Palace, with Peking duck in between.
No Shopping Stops, a Rickshaw, and a Family's Courtyard to Sit In
A small group, door to door, with every fee in the price and no shopping stops at all. The hutong ride ends inside a family courtyard rather than at a gate.
Pandas at Breakfast, and Lunch Only If You Book the Full Package
Get to the Panda House early enough to watch them eat, then the Summer Palace and the hutongs. Lunch is your own unless you book the all-inclusive package.
Roast Duck for Lunch, and the Hunt for the Palace's Missing Half Room
Eight hours from an 8am hotel pickup, every ticket and a Peking duck lunch included, and a guide who takes you to where the half room is supposed to be.
The Boat Across Kunming Lake, and Only Between April and October
Entrance fees, private car, hotel pickup and a Chinese lunch all included, and from 1 April to 30 October the day crosses Kunming Lake by boat.
The Boat Built With the Navy's Money, and 14,000 Paintings Overhead
Eight packages from two hours to eight, and the walk that ends at the Marble Boat Cixi paid for with money meant for the imperial navy.
Three Hours in One Garden: the Corridor, the Island, the Tower
The Summer Palace on its own, three hours of it, morning or half past one: the longest corridor in the world, South Lake Island and the climb to the tower.
Toboggan Down From the Wall, Then Choose: the Garden or the Tomb
Mutianyu is the quieter stretch of wall, with a chairlift up and a toboggan down. The afternoon is yours to choose: the Summer Palace, or underground at Dingling.
Two Heritage Sites in Half a Day, and the Card Games in the Park
Both sites in one half day, morning or afternoon, with hotel pickup. Cixi's opera house at one end, and the card and chess players in the park at the other.
Everything Counted in Nines, and 193 Metres of Wall That Carries a Whisper
Pandas in the morning when they move, Cixi's own rooms at the Summer Palace, and a temple where the steps and railings are counted in nines. Lunch included.
On Mondays the Lama Temple Stands In, and a Code for the Evening Square
Four UNESCO sites, all fees, lunch and a private car included, with the Lama Temple standing in on Mondays when the Forbidden City is shut.
The Bird's Nest on the Way Home, and a Boat If the Season Allows
A 7:30 start gets you to the pandas at feeding time, and the drive back passes the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube. The lake boat runs in season only.
Every Stop Timed to the Minute, Including the Two Shopping Ones
Two hours in the palace, one at the Temple of Heaven, ninety minutes at the Summer Palace, back at five. A medicine shop and a pearl market are on the route.
Enter Any Time Between 6:30 and 15:30, and Stay Until They Close
The main ticket buys the lake and the landscape; the combined one opens Dehe Garden, Suzhou Street and the tower. The inner gardens shut before the park does.
The Canal the Court Used to Reach the Garden, If You Want the Boat
Two hours at the Temple of Heaven, or eight covering the Lama Temple, duck for lunch and the Summer Palace, with the Imperial Canal cruise as an optional extra.
Lunch Is Optional, the Palace Is at Half Past Eight, Home by Six
An 8am pickup, two hours in the Forbidden City before the crowds thicken, and the Chinese lunch left as an option rather than billed to everyone.
The QR Code Comes a Week Early and Is Checked Inside, Not Just at the Gate
A regular ticket covers the lakes and pavilions; the combination one opens the opera house, the tower, Suzhou Street and the museum, all shut on Mondays.
Four Architectures in One Temple, and the Jade Stop Is Declared
Han, Mongol, Manchu and Tibetan building in one temple, then the Summer Palace and the pandas. A jade store and a tea house are also on the route.
Nine Hours, Four Imperial Sites, and the Pearl Market in Between
Nine hours covering the square, the palace, the Temple of Heaven and the Summer Palace, with a Chinese lunch. Pickup is from hotels inside the 4th Ring Road.
Ratings collected by Viator, Tripadvisor and Civitatis
The combined ticket, and the five yuan nobody explains
The park publishes a simple entry and a combined ticket, and it also publishes what each enclosure costs on its own. Put those numbers next to each other and something does not close. Dehe Yuan is 5 CNY. The Tower of Buddhist Incense is 10. Suzhou Street is 10. Add them to the 30 CNY high-season entry and you get 55 CNY. The combined ticket costs 60. In winter the same sum gives 45 against a combined price of 50. The gap is five yuan, in both halves of the year.
Five yuan is not money, but it is a clue, and the honest answer is that we do not know what it buys. Wenchang Yuan is frequently named as a fourth site inside the combined ticket, and we could not find a price for it or a statement from the park confirming that it is included. So here is the position: the combined ticket probably covers something the separate list does not name, and until the park says so plainly, buy it because you intend to see all three named enclosures, not because it looks like a discount. It is not one.
The practical version is easier. If the only interior you want is the Tower of Buddhist Incense, the sum is 30 plus 10, and 40 CNY beats 60. If you want the tower, the theatre garden and the canal street, the combined ticket saves you a queue at three separate windows and costs five yuan for the privilege.
| Ticket or enclosure | Price | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Simple entry, 1 April to 31 October | 30 CNY | The grounds, the lake, the hill |
| Simple entry, 1 November to 31 March | 20 CNY | The same, on the winter timetable |
| Combined ticket, high season | 60 CNY | Entry plus the three enclosures listed here |
| Combined ticket, low season | 50 CNY | The same three enclosures |
| Dehe Yuan | 5 CNY | Separate price, closes on Mondays |
| Tower of Buddhist Incense | 10 CNY | Separate price, no closing day published |
| Suzhou Street | 10 CNY | Separate price, closes on Mondays |
| Entry plus the three, added up | 55 CNY | Five yuan under the combined ticket |
| Beijing annual parks card | 100 CNY | Covers this park; pays for itself on a fourth visit |
Six in the morning, and nothing open until eight
The park and the things you pay extra for keep two different timetables, and the gap between them is the most useful thing to know here. From 1 April the gates run 06:00 to 20:00 with the last entry at 19:00. The enclosures run 08:00 to 18:00, with their own last entry at 17:30. So the first two hours of every day are park only, and the last two hours are park only again. In winter the pattern holds and shifts: gates 06:30 to 19:00 with last entry at 18:00, enclosures 08:30 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30.
Two consequences follow, and neither is complicated. A combined ticket bought for a visit that starts at seven and finishes at ten in the morning has paid 30 extra yuan for two hours of closed doors and one hour of open ones. And a visitor who wants the lake without crowds has a window before eight that costs 30 CNY and needs no decision at all.
The park and the enclosures, month by month
Two timetables inside one gate. The park keeps the long hours and the paying enclosures keep short ones, and only the enclosures have a closing day.
| Month | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The park06:00 to 20:00 with last entry at 19:00 from 1 April; 06:30 to 19:00 with last entry at 18:00 from 1 November, when simple entry falls from 30 CNY to 20. No weekly closing day is published for the park itself by any source we reached. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| Suzhou Street and Dehe Yuan08:00 to 18:00 with last entry at 17:30 from 1 April; 08:30 to 17:00 with last entry at 16:30 from 1 November. Both close on Mondays outside public holidays, which takes two of the three enclosures out of the combined ticket for that day. | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
Timetables and prices read on 2026-09-05 from the park's published price list. Closures for Chinese New Year and the National Day holiday are not published anywhere we could reach.
The Monday line deserves saying out loud, because the habit people bring to Beijing gets it backwards. The park does not close on Mondays. Suzhou Street and Dehe Yuan do, public holidays excepted, and they are two of the three enclosures the combined ticket exists to open. So Monday is a fine day to come and a poor day to buy the 60 CNY ticket. Somebody arriving on a Monday having learned that Beijing palaces shut that day loses the visit for no reason at all.
A park first, a monument second
Administratively this is one of the sixteen parks on the Beijing annual parks card, run by the city's park management centre. That single fact explains most of how it behaves. There is no compulsory route and no one-way system: several gates work in both directions, unlike a museum with one entrance and two exits. There is no weekly closing day. And the gates open at six, which no museum anywhere does.
The card that goes with all sixteen costs 100 CNY, and at 30 CNY a visit it starts paying for itself on the fourth entry. That arithmetic settles who it is for. It is a product for someone who lives within a subway ride of the north gate, not for a traveller with four days in the city and one afternoon to spend by the lake.
Booking it, and the channel that is missing
Booking ahead is required. The window is wider and gentler than the one the Palace Museum runs: anywhere from one to seven days before the visit, with fresh availability released each evening at 21:00, so a plan that slips by a day does not have to start over. Foreign visitors hand a passport over at the gate and receive the ticket against it.
The part that is missing is the part that matters. We could not find an international booking channel of the kind the Palace Museum operates, the sort that takes an ordinary foreign credit card and asks for nothing else. The channels the Chinese sources name are a WeChat account, a mini-program and a municipal app, all of which assume a Chinese phone number and a Chinese payment method. Whether a physical ticket window still exists here for a walk-up buyer is not confirmed by anything we reached either, and we are not going to assume it does.
That gap is the honest reason a resold product has more value at this park than it might appear to. A guided listing on this site is not buying priority, and there is no queue here to jump. It is buying the one step a visitor without a Chinese phone may genuinely struggle to complete. Two more things we could not establish, and would rather declare than invent: whether the one-document-one-ticket rule applies here as it does at the Palace Museum, and whether a booked date can be changed.
How long it takes, and what the market does with it
The park publishes no visiting time of its own, which is unusual and slightly unhelpful. The estimates that exist come from travel guides rather than from the body that runs the place, and they land on two to three hours, or half a day depending on the route. Both are plausible for a site whose main axis is a shoreline.
The market has settled on something else entirely. Twelve of the 20 listings here run eight hours or more, the median is 480 minutes, and the third quartile is 123.56 EUR. In this catalogue the day is the product and the palace is a component of it, sold beside the Temple of Heaven and the Lama Temple, which are neither of them palaces and neither of them in this catalogue. Anybody looking for two hours by the lake is looking at the wrong shelf, and the right one has four listings on it.
What this site sells for the Summer Palace
Nineteen of the twenty listings come from Viator. The twentieth is Civitatis, an eight-hour tour at 20.52 EUR rated 4.6 across 240 reviews. Between them they carry 3,758 reviews at a weighted 4.748, the lowest weighted rating anywhere in the Chinese catalogue and still comfortably above the 4.653 the whole catalogue averages. Every one of the twenty cancels free, which nothing else in the Chinese catalogue manages, and one confirms instantly.
The two ends of the market are worth putting side by side, because they contradict the usual assumption about price. The best rated product with real volume is an eight-hour coach at 18.92 EUR that takes in the Lama Temple, the Temple of Heaven and this park and finishes over Peking duck, scoring 5.0 on 645 reviews. The lowest rated with volume costs 86.70 EUR for nine hours and scores 4.3 over 748 reviews. Same city, same shape of day, four and a half times the money, and the cheap one is the one people came back to recommend. Six of the twenty listings here are private, and the private ones sit in the third quartile without buying a better rating than the coach.
What people ask before buying a Summer Palace ticket
What does it cost to get in?
Simple entry is 30 CNY from 1 April to 31 October and 20 CNY from 1 November to 31 March. The combined ticket is 60 and 50 for the same two periods, and it adds Dehe Yuan, the Tower of Buddhist Incense and Suzhou Street. In this catalogue the median listing is 86.26 EUR, because what is being sold is a day out rather than a gate.
Is the combined ticket worth 60 CNY?
Only if you want all three enclosures. Bought separately they are 5, 10 and 10 CNY, which with the 30 CNY entry adds to 55, so the combined ticket costs five yuan more than the sum of its published parts. For the Tower of Buddhist Incense alone, 30 plus 10 is the cheaper route.
Is it open on Mondays?
The park is. No source we reached gives it a weekly closing day, which is what you would expect of a municipal park. Suzhou Street and Dehe Yuan do close on Mondays, holidays excepted, so a Monday visit is worth making with the 30 CNY ticket rather than the 60 CNY one.
When do the tickets go on sale?
Between one and seven days before the visit, with new availability released each evening at 21:00. Booking ahead is required, foreign visitors exchange a passport for the ticket at the gate, and no source we reached would say whether a walk-up window survives for anyone who arrives without one.
How long do I need inside?
The park publishes nothing. Travel guides estimate two to three hours, or half a day for a fuller loop. The catalogue disagrees loudly: 12 of its 20 listings run eight hours or more and the median is 480 minutes, because they wrap the park in a city tour rather than selling it alone.
Should I buy the Beijing parks card instead?
Almost certainly not, if you are visiting. It costs 100 CNY and opens this park along with fifteen others in the city. Against a 30 CNY entry that is three visits spent before it breaks even and a fourth before it earns anything, which is a resident's calculation and not a tourist's.
Data verified on. Prices, timetables, enclosure closures and the parks card from the Summer Palace price list and the Beijing park management centre. Catalogue figures from the 20 listings tracked here.