The Temple of Heaven, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, witnessed another historic interaction between Chinese and U.S. heads of states as President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump visited the park on Thursday.
Here is a brief introduction to this must-see destination for visitors to Beijing. Built in 1420, the building complex is a place where emperors of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties in China worshiped heaven for bumper harvests.
Covering an area of 273 hectares, it is divided into the Inner Temple and the Outer Temple.
The northern part of the Temple of Heaven is circular while the southern part is square, a pattern representing the ancient belief that "Heaven is round and Earth square". The northern and southern parts are connected by an around-1,200-meter-long axis, showing a beauty of symmetry and harmony.
As a masterpiece of ancient building techniques, the complex boasts a core building -- the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests, which features a mortise-and-tenon structure with three layers of glazed roofs supported by 28 pillars.
The Temple of Heaven opened to the public as a park in 1918, and was listed among the first batch of cultural relics under key national protection by the State Council in 1961.
Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, it is one of the 15 heritage components on the Beijing Central Axis that was included in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in 2024.
Temple of Heaven witnesses new historic interaction between Chinese, US heads of state
