Temple of Heaven in Beijing

As we were staying in Beijing we wanted to visit many famous places. Unfortunately we had to choose few only among loads of sites which are worth to see over there. We picked The Temple of Heaven (天坛). In order to get there we took a subway from our hotel. We often took a subway in Beijing as there is huge traffic.

This complex of Taoist buildings was visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to Heaven for good harvest.

In order to get to the Temple of Heaven the ticket needs to be bought. More over to see all buildings in the complex 3 tickets are required or one, more expensive, for all the places there.

Anyway the Temple consists of three main groups of constructions and it is surrounded by a park. In this beautiful park there are a lot of people hanging out. It is so nice to see people despite of their age exercising, dancing or playing Jiànzi 毽子 (kicking shuttlecock - picture on the right). I have never seen that in Poland or Ireland on that scale:)

The Temple of Heaven from the North side

The main building is The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests (祈年殿). It is a circular building, built on three levels of marble stone base, where the Emperor prayed for good harvests. The building is completely wooden, with no nails. It is very impressive. It looked for me like floating in the air.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests

The Imperial Vault of Heaven (皇穹宇) is surrounded by a smooth circular wall, the Echo Wall, that can transmit sounds over large distances. We checked that and it really works. You can hear clearly a person from the opposite part of the wall. It was very exciting!

The Echo Wall in the background