Beijing: an imperial capital of walls, courtyards and coal-fired duck

Beijing wears six centuries of empire lightly. The **Great Wall at Mutianyu** is where most travellers meet it first: a restored ridge of grey stone that climbs through chestnut forest, watchtower after watchtower, steep enough that the last stretch leaves you breathing hard and the descent by toboggan feels entirely earned. From up there the Yan mountains fold away north and the city is nowhere in sight. Down in the centre the scale is horizontal instead. You cross **Tiananmen Square** and then the **Forbidden City**, courtyard after courtyard of vermilion walls and yellow-glazed tile, twenty-four emperors' worth of throne halls, until you climb **Jingshan Hill** behind it and finally see the whole golden roofscape at once. The **Temple of Heaven** is best early, when retired Beijingers are dancing, kicking jianzi shuttlecocks and singing opera in the cypress park around the round blue-tiled hall; the **Summer Palace** is best late, walking the painted Long Corridor with Kunming Lake going pink. The other Beijing lives in the *hutongs* — the grey-brick lanes north of the lakes, around Nanluoguxiang and the Drum and Bell Towers, where courtyard houses, barbers and men playing xiangqi on upturned crates survive between the ring roads. A bicycle or a rickshaw is the right speed for them. Eat accordingly: **Peking duck** carved at the table with pancakes, scallion and sweet bean sauce; jianbing crêpes from a morning cart; zhajiangmian noodles; lamb skewers heavy with cumin. Come in September or October, when the ginkgos on the temple avenues turn yellow and the sky is finally, reliably blue.