City guide · Jiangsu
Capital of six dynasties, capital of the Republic, and the city that eats more duck than anywhere else on earth.
Reviewed by our Beijing team Updated 2026-10-10
The short version
City guide
Photographs from the coast, and what other travellers wrote afterwards.
Visiting Nanjing is like browsing an antique shop — there are marks of erosion by time everywhere. You have to look slowly, and let it tell you the story.
Zhu Ziqing, 'Nanjing'
As someone who grew up here, I am as used to Nanjing as I am to my own family. The weekdays are noisy with business, but on a weekend you can walk by Xuanwu Lake or sit under the plane trees and it all feels entirely natural. Once you have lived here, you never really leave.
A Nanjing local, in the source guide
Nanjing does not announce itself. There is no single skyline, no one monument that sums it up. What you get instead is a city where 1,700 years of capital-building has settled into the ground: a Ming city wall you can walk on, a tomb avenue lined with stone elephants, a Republic-era mausoleum in the shape of a bell, and a river quarter that has been rebuilt so many times it now sells nostalgia by the lantern.
The city has been the capital of six dynasties — Wu, Eastern Jin, Song, Qi, Liang and Chen — and then of the Ming before the third emperor moved north, and then of the Republic of China. It has also been sacked repeatedly and rebuilt each time. Zhu Ziqing put it best: visiting Nanjing is like browsing an antique shop, there are marks of erosion by time everywhere. That is the appeal. Nothing here is pristine; everything is layered.
The other thing Nanjing has is trees. The plane trees planted along the Republican avenues are the city's signature, and under them the place slows down: people walk the 15 km shore of Xuanwu Lake at dusk, amateur choirs set up on the lakeside boardwalks, and in the old lanes west of the Presidential Palace the grey-brick villas of the 1930s are still somebody's home.
It is also one of the easiest big Chinese cities to move around. The metro reaches nearly every sight worth naming, buses are ¥2, and almost everything is within a half-hour of Xinjiekou. Come for three days: one for the mountain and the tombs, one for the Republic and the river, one for whatever is in season.
Nanjing
Seven things that are worth rearranging a day for.
Highlights
Nanjing has been the capital of six dynasties, of the early Ming, of the Republic and of the Taiping rebels, and it has been burnt and rebuilt more times than any other Chinese city. Zhu Ziqing's line about browsing an antique shop is the accurate one — nothing is pristine, everything is layered.
The tomb of the father of the Republic sits on the shoulder of Purple Mountain and reads, from the air, like a bell lying on the hillside. Free since November 2010, but ticketed by daily quota — reserve the day before. The staircase is 392 steps and gets steeper as it climbs, deliberately.
The joint tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu emperor, and Empress Ma, laid out on the flank of Purple Mountain 600 years ago and still intact underground. The ¥70 ticket bundles the tomb, the 2 km Sacred Way of stone beasts, Plum Blossom Hill and Zixia Lake.
Ten li of river that was the pleasure quarter of the Six Dynasties and the Ming, rebuilt in grey brick and now lit end to end. A painted boat costs ¥80 after 18:00 and boards at the pier in front of the Confucius Temple's Dacheng Hall. The point is the lanterns, not the commentary.
Xuanwu Lake fills the north-east corner inside the city wall: roughly 15 km around, five islets linked by causeways, lotus in summer. Free, and at night the boardwalks by Xuanwu Gate fill with amateur choirs, erhu players and dance groups.
Nanjing is called the duck capital. Salted duck has been made here for a thousand years, duck-blood-and-vermicelli soup is the breakfast and the late-night snack, and the roast-duck soup bun is the dish every visitor tries once. Nobody leaves Nanjing without eating duck three times.
Suggested routes
Ming tombs and Republic memorials on day one, remembrance and the lake on day two. This is the standard first trip.
Start early at Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum before the quota bites — the 392 steps are cooler at 8am anyway. Come down and take the little tourist train (¥3, free with a joint ticket) across to Ming Xiaoling.
Walk the Sacred Way in the afternoon, then bus it to the Confucius Temple. Eat your way through the Qinhuai snack stalls at dusk and finish on a boat after the lanterns come on.
Stops: Sun Yat-sen MausoleumMing XiaolingSacred WayConfucius TempleQinhuai boat
Morning at Yuhuatai — free, 42.3 m memorial obelisk to the revolutionaries, and the pebble and tea gardens. Then the Nanjing Massacre Memorial on Shuixi Street, which needs a quiet hour and costs nothing.
Recover at Xuanwu Lake in the late afternoon: walk a stretch of the 15 km shore, take the park shuttle to Jiefang Gate, and come out at the Ming city wall ruins. Dinner on the Shiziqiao food street off Hunan Road.
Stops: YuhuataiNanjing Massacre MemorialXuanwu LakeMing city wallShiziqiao
The three things people would ask whether you saw. Do it by metro and do not try to add a fourth.
Metro or tourist bus 1 to the mausoleum car park, up the steps, back down within two hours. Straight on to Xuanwu Lake for an hour of walking under the willows.
Late afternoon cross to the Confucius Temple: the Confucian hall, the old examination compound of Jiangnan, the lane at Wuyi Xiang. Eat the eight Qinhuai snacks, then the boat, then home.
Stops: Sun Yat-sen MausoleumXuanwu LakeConfucius TempleQinhuai boat
Three slower days built for November: maples, the Republic quarter, the bridge and the old railway station.
Mausoleum first while it is quiet, then tourist bus 2 or 164 down to Yuhuatai for half a day among the woods. If your legs hold out, bus 33 on to Xinjiekou in the evening.
Stops: Sun Yat-sen MausoleumYuhuataiXinjiekou
Boat or walk on Xuanwu Lake, watch the choirs, then bus 52 to Hunan Road and eat the length of Shiziqiao — 330 m of granite paving, from duck-blood soup to soup buns to candied haws. Take the metro back from Xuanwu Gate.
Stops: Xuanwu LakeShiziqiao food streetHunan Road
Bus 12, 15, 67, 69 or 307 to the south bridgehead park of the Yangtze River Bridge — 1,577 m of main span, finished in 1968 entirely by Chinese engineers. Walk the deck, then cross to Pukou for the 1914 railway terminus where Zhu Ziqing's father bought the oranges.
Stops: Nanjing Yangtze River BridgePukou railway station
Sights
The Republic
The tomb of Sun Yat-sen on the south flank of Purple Mountain, laid out so that from the air the whole complex reads as a bell — the 'freedom bell'. The stair is 392 granite steps and deliberately steepens towards the top, which is read as the revolution getting harder. The memorial arch, the tomb passage, the stele pavilion and the sacrificial hall all sit on one axis.
Tip Reserve the free ticket the day before and go at opening. The quota is real — late arrivals get turned around at the gate.
Imperial tomb
The joint tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, founder of the Ming, and Empress Ma, sitting under Purple Mountain and facing Plum Blossom Hill across the valley. The Sacred Way begins at Sifangcheng, the stele pavilion his son the Yongle emperor raised; beyond it the Square City is 75 m wide, 16 m high and 31 m deep, with a ramped tunnel of 54 steps up to the top. The burial mound behind is a grassed dome roughly 400 m across.
Tip Come in late February. The ticket includes Plum Blossom Hill, which holds over 200 of the world's 300 known plum varieties in some 30,000 trees.
The city's mountain
Known as Zhongshan and, in the Eastern Jin, as Purple Mountain for the purple shale that makes the ridge haze violet from a distance. Three peaks run together like a dragon — the old line is 'Zhongshan coils like a dragon, Stone City crouches like a tiger'. It sits on the boundary between temperate and subtropical, so the planting is unusually rich.
Tip The cable car is the lazy way up and worth it on a clear day. On summer nights the lower slopes are famous for fireflies.
The river
Ten li of river inside the city that was the pleasure quarter of the Six Dynasties and reached its peak under the Ming — painted boats, lanterns, the sound of oars. The boat trip is the whole point of the river: it runs from the Pan Pond pier past the Bailuzhou park, the Seven-Colour Water Street, the East Water Gate and Zhonghua Gate.
Tip Go after 18:00 and pay the extra ¥20 — the daytime river is a canal, the night river is the reason the place is famous.
Old quarter
The temple complex north of the river — Confucian hall, academy and the Jiangnan examination hall — restored by the city from 1985 with every shopfront rebuilt in Ming-Qing style. Climb to the Jingyi Pavilion on the mound behind the Chongsheng Hall for the view over the whole quarter. Spring brings the lantern fair, summer the temple market, autumn the food festival and the Confucius ceremony.
Tip Wuyi Lane is a few dozen metres south-west — a narrow, quiet lane, and the place to stand and think about the Wang and Xie families of the Eastern Jin.
City lake
A lake of roughly 15 km of shoreline just outside the old north wall, joined to the city by Xuanwu Gate and Jiefang Gate. Five islets — Huan, Ying, Liang, Cui and Ling — are linked by causeways and bridges; the park has a children's playground, open-air theatre and boating. It was a naval training ground and then a pleasure ground for emperors, and was renamed in 448 after a black dragon was supposedly seen in it.
Tip Nights are the best time: choirs, instrumentalists and dance groups set up on the boardwalks either side of Xuanwu Gate. If your legs give out, the park shuttle runs to Jiefang Gate, which drops you at the city wall ruins.
Remembrance
The memorial to the victims of the massacre that followed the Japanese capture of Nanjing on 13 December 1937, built on the site of one of the mass graves at Jiangdongmen. Three sections: the open-air display, the skeletal remains and the documentary record. It is free, and it is not a place to hurry — allow an hour and expect to be quiet for a while afterwards.
Tip Go in the morning and leave the rest of the day light. Photography rules inside are strict — check before you raise a phone.
Free park
A kilometre outside Zhonghua Gate, named for the legend of the monk Yunguang preaching so devoutly that flowers fell like rain. Six zones: the historic sites, the revolutionary martyrs' memorial, the Yuhua pebble culture zone, the Yuhua tea zone, the amusement area and the dense woodland. The memorial obelisk stands on the 60 m high point and is 42.3 m tall — for 23 April 1949, the day the city was taken.
Tip The famous Yuhua pebbles are not quarried here — they come from Liuhe, on the Yangtze north of the city. Buy them at the Qingliangshan antiques market rather than from a stall on the spot.
City wall
The largest surviving castle gate in China and the formal south gate of the early Ming capital, built between 1369 and 1375 on the older southern gate of the Song-Jiankang prefecture. It runs 118.5 m east to west and 128 m north to south, stands 20.45 m high, and three enclosures are threaded by four arches; 27 troop-hiding chambers inside could shelter 3,000 men.
Tip Come up here from the riverside and walk the wall — the ramp on the side of the enclosure was built so horses could ride up.
The crossing
The first bridge over the Yangtze designed and built entirely by Chinese engineers, finished in 1968 as a double-deck road-and-rail crossing: 1,577 m of main span, 6,772 m of railway bridge, 4,589 m of highway deck, 19.5 m wide, with 22 arches of double-curvature approach on the landward ends. Before it, a train crossed by ferry and it took two hours. Now it takes three minutes.
Tip Buses stopped stopping on the bridge itself on 1 January 2010, so you walk on or take a taxi. Out-of-town plates are barred from the bridge; local cars cross free.
Republic ghost
Opened in 1914 as the southern terminus of the Tianjin–Pukou railway, once one of the most consequential addresses in China: Sun Yat-sen's coffin arrived here, the People's Liberation Army launched the crossing of the Yangtze from here, and Zhu Ziqing's father bought the oranges in 'The Sight of Father's Back' on this platform. It closed to passengers decades ago and has become a film set for Republican-era dramas.
Tip Pair it with the bridge — they are the same story. Late afternoon light on the platform is the photograph.
Side trip
A spa town about 30 km east of the city that has been used as a bathing place for 1,500 years and was named a world-famous hot-spring town in October 2012. The water is a calcium-magnesium thermal spring carrying traces of strontium and radon, used for skin complaints and arthritis. The resorts open 10:00 to midnight.
Tip Soak in 15-minute sessions, never on a full or empty stomach, and drink water first. Yishang is the best-equipped of the group. On the way back, stop at the Ming Culture Village for the Yangshan stele — 90.7 m of uncut stone, entry ¥35.
Food
The dish Nanjing is judged on, made here for more than a thousand years: fragrant, crisp-skinned, tender. Around the Mid-Autumn festival, when the osmanthus is out and the birds are fat, it is sold as osmanthus duck and it is at its best. Buy three or four duck heads and eat them with beer.
The city's street-food signature. Cubes of duck blood like pieces of purple jade in a green-tinged broth, with ivory-white duck intestine and mahogany-red gizzard, and vermicelli wound through all of it. Add vinegar and ask for extra coriander. About ¥14 a bowl.
Nanjing's answer to the soup dumpling: a thin wrapper holding duck meat and duck broth, faintly sweet. Bite a small hole in the top, drink the soup carefully, then eat the rest. Do not tear it and do not rush — the soup is genuinely hot.
One of the eight Qinhuai snacks, and the reason to queue at a Muslim-run old shop: crescent-shaped, golden-crisp on the outside, full of filling and juice. Locals eat them with a bowl of mild wonton soup to cut the richness. ¥10–20 a head.
Nanjing takes its sweet things seriously — sweet but not cloying, sticky but not gluey, small, brightly coloured and soft. The cakes are sold by weight and the point is to eat them with a pot of green tea. Fangpo on Wangfu Street is the name locals give first.
Nanjing's other night obsession, sold by the jin at ¥18–50 depending on size. The gills are trimmed and the digestive tract pulled before cooking, so they are clean; the meat stays sweet and firm. The big restaurant chains do it best.
A fixed set rather than a dish — the local canon of small plates, assembled from the old teahouses along the river: five-spice egg, two-way sesame cake, Yuhua pebble dumplings, dried-shredded-bean-curd soup, and the rest. Order the set once and you have covered the river quarter.
The one thing worth eating out at the hot springs: pressed, sliced chicken sold by the jin at around ¥20, eaten in or taken away vacuum-packed. A plain country lunch in Tangshan costs ¥20-something a head.
Where to eat
The one everyone goes to
A big, loud, deliberately old-fashioned hall — bamboo blinds, red lanterns, shop banners, a greeter in a long gown calling out in Nanjing dialect, storytelling and pingtan on the stage, and eight-seat tables. Come for the lion's head meatballs and the duck, and book or queue.
The bowl
Small shop, disproportionate fame. Duck intestine, duck blood, pickled mustard, coriander and peanuts in a big bowl of vermicelli — the broth is clean and the portion is generous. Served in a paper bowl whether you eat in or take away, which is why people trust it. Order two duck-fat sesame cakes with it.
Muslim old shop
A well-known old halal name in Nanjing, and the beef potstickers are the reason: crescent-shaped, deep gold, help-yourself from the tray at the door, full of filling and juice. Everyone eats them with a bowl of light wonton soup.
Century-old cakes
A hundred-year-old shop doing traditional Jiangnan rice-flour cakes: careful ingredients, precise making, and things you look at before you eat. Their filled dumplings and five-colour cake are counted among the eight Qinhuai snacks, and the lotus-seed and red-bean dumplings are a nationally recognised famous snack.
Halal, since the late Qing
An old halal house on the busiest corner of the Confucius Temple, doing halal banquet dishes and the halal version of the eight Qinhuai snacks. Its large dishes and its pastries have won national gold awards more than once.
Huaiyang, old school
A national time-honoured brand in Ming-Qing style buildings that sit naturally inside the temple quarter: self-service on the ground floor, four private rooms upstairs that look out over the river. Known for Huaiyang cooking and for a list of snacks that have won national awards — dried-shredded-bean-curd soup, steamed buns, four-flavour pastry, iron eggs, lotus-leaf and egg-yolk dumplings.
Riverside set menu
The place to sit down to the eight Qinhuai snacks as a proper meal. Five-spice egg, two-way sesame cake and Yuhua pebble dumplings are the house pieces; shadow-puppet theatre and live music run through the meal, and the windows look straight onto the river.
Where to stay
Most popular base
The most-requested area and where the city's folk culture concentrates: you step out onto the river, the snack streets are at the door, and the lanterns are the view. Everything from hostel beds to four-star rooms. The one caveat is damp — these buildings sit on the river.
Budget, on the river
Right by Pingjiang Bridge on the Qinhuai, inside the temple commercial district, in a Ming-Qing style building with a bar and simple meals on the ground floor. Owners are friendly and it is minutes from the temple — but in the rainy season the rooms do get damp.
Republic villa
In the Meiyuan Xincun Republican villa cluster just east of the Presidential Palace, one metro stop from Xinjiekou, under the plane trees the whole way in. The house is said to have been lived in by one of Sun Yat-sen's aides and later by Chiang's secretary Chen Bulei. Coffee, a courtyard, billiards, and a long list of things to do in the rain.
University district
A Republican villa in a lane between Nanjing Normal University and Shanghai Road — quiet, comfortable, and the area is the cheapest good food in the city. The sort of place where you end up talking to travellers from four countries over breakfast.
Mid-range
On Central Road facing Xuanwu Gate park, near the Hunan Road shopping street, five minutes' drive from the exhibition centre and close to the metro. American-style simple rooms, citrus scent in the lobby. Reviews say the front desk is the weak point and breakfast is ordinary.
The splurge
Inside the Zhongshan scenic area next to the 27-hole Zhongshan golf course, ten villas set around a lake on the wooded flank of the mountain, most rooms with a wide private lake-view balcony. A quiet place inside a noisy city, if you want the mountain rather than the river.
Getting around
Nanjing Lukou International (NKG) sits about 35 km south of the centre, roughly 45 minutes by airport expressway. Two coach lines run in: line 1 (east) from the first landing of the day to the last, dropping at Yuhua Square, the Qinhuai district government, Xihua Gate and Nanjing railway station; line 2 (west) from 09:30 to 22:30 to Nanjing South station and Zhonghua Gate.
Two stations matter. Nanjing station on the north shore of Xuanwu Lake handles most services; Nanjing South in Yuhua district is the high-speed hub, wired into eight high-grade lines with G-trains to Beijing, Tianjin, Jinan and Qingdao. Nanjing South to Beijing South is 3h39m at best; Nanjing to Shanghai is 2h17m on the fastest intercity.
Nine high-grade highways radiate out of the city and there are eight long-distance stations; the biggest is the Central Gate station in Xiaguan, the largest in the province by departures and passengers, serving Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong, Henan, Shanghai, Beijing and further.
Fares are banded at ¥2, ¥3 and ¥4; ¥2 covers the first stretch of the network and ¥4 the longest rides. Trains run every day of the week from about 05:56 to 23:04, every 5 minutes at peak and 8 to 10 minutes off-peak. Line 1 links Nanjing station, Xinjiekou, Zhonghua Gate and Nanjing South in one go.
Mostly ¥2, air-conditioned; ¥1 services are rare now. The numbering tells you what you are getting: 1–159 are city routes, 3xx are small city buses, 8xx are night routes, anything starting with 'you' is a tourist line, 6xx serve Pukou and Liuhe.
Taxis flag at ¥9 for the first 3 km, then ¥2.4 a kilometre, ¥2.7 at night, plus a ¥2 fuel surcharge; waiting time is not charged. Rental outfits run from about ¥220 a day for a basic saloon with 300 km included.
Nanjing is China's largest inland river port and 10,000-tonne ships work it year-round; passenger boats run up and down the Yangtze to Chongqing, Hankou and Shanghai. Locally, the Zhongshan Pier–Pukou Pier crossing is the main way over the river, and three cheap lines serve the sandbars: Yanjiqi to Liuhe and to Baguazhou, and Baguazhou to Dachang.
Shopping
The peak of Chinese silk weaving — solid, deep-patterned, strongly coloured, called the rosy clouds of heaven. It was imperial cloth under the Yuan, Ming and Qing. To buy it properly, go to the Nanjing Brocade Research Institute at Jiangdongmen rather than a souvenir shop.
A natural agate, called the queen of stones, polished by water into rounded cobbles whose interiors hold landscapes, clouds, flowers, fish, even figures. Collectors keep them in a bowl of water on the desk. Buy at the Qingliangshan antiques market — and know that they are quarried at Liuhe, not at Yuhuatai.
A silk craft with a dense, soft pile: firm in the hand, quiet in colour, pattern standing clear from the ground. Made in pure silk and in silk-cotton mixes, sold as yardage, table runners, cushions and — the signature piece — hanging screens.
Nanjing's own fan brand, famous nationwide at its height, now made by a handful of workshops and a very few old craftspeople. If you see a good one being made, that is the moment to buy it.
Made to the international high-grade bone-china formula with 45% bone ash — fine-bodied, thin-walled, warm and jade-like in the glaze. It is what the city's hotels and gift buyers use.
The souvenir that gets eaten. Salted duck travels well in vacuum packs, and the ones sold at the old duck shops and the big food halls are the real thing. Buy at the end of the trip, not the beginning.
Practical
Nanjing rewards staying put rather than ticking off. The city's best hours are early on the mountain, dusk on the lake, and after nine at night along the river — none of which need a ticket.
| Best months | Late Feb–mid-Mar for the plum blossom; Nov for the maples. Subtropical monsoon: 1,200 mm of rain a year, average 15.4°C, recorded extremes 39.7°C and -13.1°C |
|---|---|
| Key tickets | Mausoleum free by quota; Ming Xiaoling ¥70; Purple Mountain Observatory ¥15; Zhonghua Gate area free; bridge park ¥7, bridgehead ¥8; undersea world ¥150; Tangshan springs ¥108–158; Yangshan stele ¥35 |
| Free sights | Mausoleum, Xuanwu Lake, Massacre Memorial, Yuhuatai, Purple Mountain, Confucius Temple, Stone City, Wulongtan, Gulou Park, Qingliangshan, Defence Park, Xiuchou Park, Ming Palace, Jiuhuashan Park, Binjiang Park, Qiqiaoweng wetland |
| Qinhuai boats | ¥60 by day, ¥80 from 18:00 to 23:30, boarding at the Dacheng Hall pier; private 16-seat ¥2,400, 20-seat ¥2,600 |
| Annual pass | ¥200 for a year, ¥100 for six months; bring ID and a photo, and it can be bought at each scenic spot |
| Metro and buses | Metro ¥2–4 by distance, roughly 05:56–23:04; buses ¥2 air-conditioned. Tourist lines 1–4 cover the main sights |
| Festivals | Plum Blossom Festival from late February on Plum Blossom Hill (about 400,000 visitors); Qinhuai lantern fair around Lunar New Year; Confucius Temple food festival and Confucius ceremony in autumn |
| Emergencies | Tourist complaints 025-83418185 / 18951888590; directions 16851556; transport hotline 96196. Jiangsu Province Hospital, 300 Guangzhou Road, 025-83718836; Jiangsu Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 155 Hanzhong Road, 025-86617141 |
Tips
Free does not mean walk-in. Entry runs on a timed free ticket with a daily quota, and when the number is reached the gates shut. Book online for the next morning, carry your ID, and arrive before the tour buses.
Nanjing's Jin-Su cooking is deliberately small-portioned and fine — the point is precision, not volume. If you are hungry, add a staple: a bowl of noodles, a plate of cakes, another round of buns. Do not judge the kitchen by the plate size.
Early spring here is raw: warm one day, cold the next, and when it rains it is properly cold. Pack a real layer and carry a rain cover. This is also the season the plum blossom draws everyone out, so book rooms early.
The Confucius Temple quarter is the best base and the dampest. If you are sensitive to it, stay at Xinjiekou or the university district and metro in — the city is small enough that it costs you ten minutes.
Fifteen minutes at a time in the Tangshan springs, feet in first to test the temperature, and nothing on a full or empty stomach — leave an hour either side of a meal. Anyone with heart disease, high blood pressure or arteriosclerosis should wet the body gradually rather than getting straight in.
Independent travellers usually try to fit three sights into a day, and in Nanjing the metro is what makes that possible. A room near a station beats a room with a view of the river every time.
Background
Nanjing sits on the lower Yangtze at roughly 31°14' to 32°37' north and 118°22' to 119°14' east. Low hills and ridges make up 64.52% of the city's area; water another 11.4%; plain and low ground 24.08%. The Yangtze runs about 95 km through it, with the Qinhuai to the south of the river and the Chuhe to the north as the two main tributaries, their valley plains the old farming core. Sun Yat-sen's own verdict was that no other great city in the world had high mountains, deep water and flat plain all in one place.
The climate is a subtropical monsoon: about 1,200 mm of rain a year, four distinct seasons, an annual mean of 15.4°C, and recorded extremes of 39.7°C and -13.1°C. Springs are mild, the plum rain is relentless in early summer, and summer is hot enough that Nanjing has long been counted one of the three furnaces with Wuhan and Chongqing. Autumn is dry and cool, winter cold and dry, and spring and autumn are both short.
It begins with a fortress: Yue City on the Qinhuai in 472 BC, then Jinling yi on Stone Mountain under the Chu in 306 BC, renamed Moling by the First Qin Emperor. In 211 Sun Quan moved his base here and called it Jianye; in 229 he was crowned emperor of Wu. Then Eastern Jin, Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang and Chen all kept their capital here — the Six Dynasties, when Jiankang was the largest city in the world with a population of a million. Sui razed it; Tang demoted it; the Southern Tang restored it as Jiangning; Song made it a secondary capital; and in 1368 Zhu Yuanzhang was proclaimed emperor here and named it Nanjing, the southern capital.
His son moved the capital to Beijing in 1420 and Nanjing became the reserve capital — which is why the Ming tomb, the Ming wall and the Ming palace are all here. In 1853 the Taiping rebels took it and called it Tianjing. In 1912 Sun Yat-sen was sworn in here as provisional president of the Republic; in 1927 the Nationalist government was formed here. On 13 December 1937 Japanese forces took the city and killed more than 300,000 people over the following months. The PLA entered on 23–24 April 1949; since 1952 Nanjing has been the capital of Jiangsu.
Nanjing has its own religious geography: Qixia Mountain is one of the four great Buddhist establishments and the home of the Three Treatises school, with the earliest and largest stone Buddha caves in the south; Qingliang Temple on Qingliangshan is the home of the Fayan school, and gives the language the phrase 'he who tied the bell must untie it'; Niushou Mountain is where the Oxhead school of Chan was founded. Of the city's 51 ethnic groups, Han make up 98.56%, and the largest minority is Hui.
The city flower is the plum, and going out to look at plum blossom has been a local habit since the Six Dynasties without a break. The international plum festival runs from late February to mid-March, and the main venue on Plum Blossom Hill draws around 400,000 visits. The hill now covers more than 1,500 mu and holds over 200 of the world's 300 known plum varieties — some 30,000 trees, including the celebrated Plum King, Plum Queen and Lovers' Plum.
Travel with them
Ye Zhaoyan
More than three hundred old photographs, reassembled and reprinted so that the city's history comes back in a different form each time. Some of the images will be familiar, most will not, and both are part of Nanjing's appeal. Leaf through it before you walk the river.
Cao Xueqin
The great Qing novel, written by a man whose family had held Nanjing for three generations as the imperial textile commissioners, and whose fall from that height is the book's opening move. Read the first chapters here and the city's rise-and-fall rhythm makes sense.
Li Zhi
A folk album made in the city with a long list of Nanjing musicians, by a singer who came back here in 1999 after failing to settle in Beijing and who spent his twenties playing bars and teaching guitar. Best played walking under the plane trees.
Zhang Yimou, 2011
Set in Nanjing in 1937: an American posing as a priest, a group of schoolgirls hiding in a church, and fourteen women from the quarter, facing the massacre together. Shot in the city, and the reason many visitors look for the church and the old wall.
The questions visitors ask us most about Nanjing, answered plainly.
Prices and practical details are reviewed every month by our Beijing team and updated the day a rule changes.
Late February to mid-March for the plum blossom, and November for the maples. Nanjing is visitable in every season but it is genuinely unpleasant in high summer — it is one of the old 'three furnaces' alongside Wuhan and Chongqing, with extremes recorded at 39.7°C. Winters are cold and dry, down to -13.1°C, which is exactly when you want the hot springs at Tangshan.
It is free but not unticketed. Since 12 November 2010 entry works on a free timed ticket with a daily cap on visitor numbers, and once the cap is reached the gates close. Reserve online a day ahead, arrive early, and carry your passport or ID — you may be asked for it at the gate.
Yes, and it is underrated. The crowds go, the lake and the tombs are stark rather than green, and the city's answer to winter is Tangshan, a spa town 30 km east where the springs have been used for 1,500 years. Entry to the big resorts runs ¥108–158 and they are open 10:00 to midnight.
More than you would expect. Free: Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Xuanwu Lake, the Nanjing Massacre Memorial, Yuhuatai, Purple Mountain itself, the Confucius Temple quarter, Stone City, Gulou Park, Qingliangshan Park, the Defence Park, Mochou Lake's outer grounds, Jiuhuashan Park and the Ming Palace ruins. Purple Mountain Observatory, if you go up, is ¥15.
Duck, three ways. Start with salted duck, the city's signature, best around the Mid-Autumn festival when it is also sold as osmanthus duck. Then duck-blood-and-vermicelli soup, a greenish broth with duck blood, duck intestine and gizzard. Then the roast-duck soup bun — bite a hole, drink the soup, then eat it. Add beef potstickers and a plate of rice-flour cakes.
Yes, more than in most cities. Nanjing runs full on plum-blossom weekends, on the lantern festival and during university terms, and rooms either sell out or go up. The Confucius Temple and Qinhuai area is the most popular base; Xinjiekou is the most convenient; the university district around Shanghai Road is the cheapest.
Easily — the Shanghai–Nanjing corridor is one of the busiest rail corridors in China. High-speed trains to Suzhou take about 1 hour and there are dozens a day. Zhouzhuang and Tongli are reached by coach from Suzhou in roughly another hour, so a Jiangsu loop out of Nanjing is straightforward.
More than in most inland cities — it is a university town with a large foreign student population — but not enough to rely on outside hotels and the big museums. Sight names are signed in English at the major sites. Have your destination written in Chinese for taxi drivers, and carry a translation app.
Plan this trip
The same places, with a driver, an English-speaking guide and the tickets already bought.
City guides
Dalian
City guide · 15 tours
The Northern Pearl — China's most romantic coastal city.
Shenyang
City guide · 12 tours
Where the Qing dynasty began — an imperial palace, a warlord's mansion and the cheapest good food in the northeast.
Changbai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano on the North Korean border, a jade-green crater lake at 2,189 m, and hot springs on the way down.
Kunming
City guide · 12 tours
China's Spring City — a mild plateau capital of flowers, markets and the Stone Forest, with gulls on the lake in winter.
Dali
City guide · 12 tours
A walled Bai town between a 4,000 m mountain and a great lake — wind, flowers, snow and moon, and life at a slower speed.
Shuhe
City guide · 12 tours
The quiet version of Lijiang — a Tea Horse Road village of canals, stone bridges and slow afternoons, 4 km from the crowds.
Lijiang
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO Naxi old town of canals and cobbles beneath a 5,596 m snow mountain — the cultural heart of north-west Yunnan.
Xiamen
City guide · 12 tours
A subtropical island city of temples, fishing-village lanes and the best street food in Fujian — with the car-free islet of Gulangyu a 20-minute ferry away.
Gulangyu
City guide · 12 tours
A car-free island of colonial villas, pianos and cats, twenty minutes off Xiamen — and the one place where the trick is simply to stay the night.
Fuzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,200-year-old capital of banyan trees and mountains-within-the-city, where the Ming lanes of Sanfang Qixiang meet the dockyard that built China's modern navy.
Lugu Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,680 m lake on the Yunnan–Sichuan border, home to China's last matrilineal people, pig-trough canoes and a great deal of doing nothing.
Xishuangbanna
City guide · 12 tours
China's tropical south — rainforest, wild elephants, Dai villages and the Mekong, wrapped around the gateway city of Jinghong.
Shangri-La
City guide · 12 tours
A Tibetan town at 3,300 m in Yunnan's Diqing prefecture — monasteries, grassland, prayer wheels and cold thin air.
Nanchang
City guide · 12 tours
Jiangxi's 'hero city' on the Gan River — one great Tang pavilion, a 160-metre Ferris wheel, and the best claypot soup you will eat in China.
Hefei
City guide · 12 tours
Anhui's 2,000-year-old capital: the hometown of China's model judge, a moat-turned-garden ring, and the fast rail gateway to Huangshan.
Hongcun
City guide · 12 tours
A 900-year-old Hui village laid out as an ox, with water running to every door and a mirror-still crescent pond at its heart.
Wuhan
City guide · 12 tours
Three towns, two rivers and the best breakfast in China — a huge, blunt river city of bridges, lakes and cheap, brilliant street food.
Changsha
City guide · 12 tours
Hunan's loud, young capital: a 3,000-year-old city that eats chilli-hot food, stays up all night and treats foot massage as a civic duty.
Fenghuang Ancient Town
City guide · 12 tours
The stilt-house river town of Shen Congwen's 'Border Town' — glowing lanterns, stepping stones and the best two nights in western Hunan.
Lushan
City guide · 12 tours
A cloud-wrapped granite mountain with a Victorian hill station on top, waterfalls in three tiers, and the mist that Su Shi said you could never see through.
Wuyuan
City guide · 12 tours
China's 'most beautiful countryside' — dozens of white-walled Huizhou villages strung along streams and terraced into the hills, and two weeks a year of gold.
Mount Heng (Hengshan, Hunan)
City guide · 12 tours
The South Great Peak: a pilgrimage mountain of 72 summits where the temples run all the way to the top, and the sunrise over the cloud sea is the whole point.
Huangshan
City guide · 12 tours
Yellow Mountain: 82 granite peaks of twisted pines and grotesque rock, a sea of cloud that changes by the hour, and hot springs at the foot.
Wudang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The Taoist first mountain of China — a gilded bronze hall on a 1,612 m summit, temples hung off cliff faces, and the birthplace of tai chi.
Luoyang
City guide · 12 tours
Thirteen dynasties, 100,000 Buddhas carved into a river cliff, China's first Buddhist temple — and a whole city that turns peony-pink every April.
Yuntai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A UNESCO geopark in Henan where red-stone gorges squeeze a river to a slot, a 314 m waterfall drops in one plunge, and every path leads to another pool.
Rizhao
City guide · 12 tours
A low-key Shandong beach town where the sun rises straight out of the Yellow Sea, the sand runs 60 km and a seafood dinner costs less than a coffee in Shanghai.
Yantai
City guide · 12 tours
A northern Shandong port of fairy-tale cliffs, wine cellars and long golden beaches — where emperors once hunted the elixir of life and China's wine industry still begins.
Lianyungang
City guide · 12 tours
A working Jiangsu port with a myth in the middle of it — the Flower-Fruit Mountain of Journey to the West, a sea causeway to a big island beach, and some of the cheapest seafood on the coast.
Sanqing Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical forest of granite pillars in Jiangxi — the Python Out of the Mountain, the Goddess of the East Sea, two cable cars and a cliff-hugging walkway at 1,660 metres.
Tianjin
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's port city next door — a river of 24 bridges, 2,000 colonial villas, and the best street breakfast in northern China.
Datong
City guide · 12 tours
A frontier capital of carved Buddhas — the Yungang Grottoes, a temple pinned to a cliff, and the oldest wooden tower in China.
Taiyuan
City guide · 12 tours
Shanxi's provincial capital and noodle heartland — the spring of Jinci, two Ming pagodas, and a museum that explains the whole province.
Pingyao
City guide · 12 tours
China's best-preserved ancient walled town — a Ming wall, the first Chinese bank, and two temples of painted clay just outside the gates.
Wutai Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
China's foremost Buddhist mountain — fifty-plus temples in one valley, crowned by five flat-topped peaks up to 3,058 m.
Hulunbuir
City guide · 12 tours
China's finest grassland — a 263,000 km² sweep of steppe, birch forest and border river, best driven with the windows down.
The Forbidden City
City guide · 12 tours
Beijing's 600-year imperial palace — 8,700 rooms behind a 72-hectare wall, and the largest surviving wooden palace complex on earth.
Sanya
City guide · 12 tours
China's only true winter-sun coast — four very different bays, a coral island and a 108 m sea Buddha, all at 18° north.
Haikou
City guide · 12 tours
Hainan's capital is the island's living city — 600-year-old arcade streets, a volcanic village, and a morning-tea-to-midnight food culture.
Beihai
City guide · 12 tours
24 km of fine white sand on one side, a volcanic island of coral and lava on the other — plus a 19th-century arcade old street in between.
Nanning
City guide · 12 tours
Guangxi's green capital is a gateway to Detian Falls, Beihai and Vietnam — and a genuinely excellent food city if you let it slow you down.
Guangxi
City guide · 12 tours
One autonomous region, a dozen landscapes — limestone peaks and rice terraces in the north, a Vietnam border and a warm gulf coast in the south.
Huizhou
City guide · 12 tours
A free West Lake, a Taoist mountain and 200 km of white-sand coast — the Pearl River Delta's most underrated weekend.
Beidaihe
City guide · 12 tours
Northern China's classic beach escape — one sunrise headland, 10 km of calm swimming water, and a bird flyway overhead twice a year.
Shanhaiguan
City guide · 12 tours
The town where the Great Wall stops being a rumour of mountains and walks into the Bohai Sea.
Baiyangdian
City guide · 12 tours
The biggest freshwater lake on the North China Plain — and almost none of it can be reached except by boat.
Qinhuangdao
City guide · 12 tours
126 km of Bohai coast in one municipality — a working port, two famous resorts, and the only desert dunes that meet this sea.
Yesanpo
City guide · 12 tours
Gorge country where the Taihang and Yan ranges collide — 52.5 km of canyon walls, a cave that spits fish, and a river to fall off.
Zhuhai
City guide · 12 tours
The delta's slow city: a 28 km promenade, 146 islands, oysters fattened where the river meets the sea.
Wuyi Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
Nine bends of clear water, red sandstone cliffs, and the tea that made a mountain's name.
Jiuzhaigou
City guide · 12 tours
108 mineral-blue lakes in one 55 km valley — the place that ruins water everywhere else for you.
Mount Siguniang
City guide · 12 tours
Four snow peaks, three valleys, and the friendliest 5,000 m mountain in China to stand on top of.
Hailuogou
City guide · 12 tours
A glacier that comes down to 2,850 m, hot springs in the forest, and Gongga Shan filling the sky above both.
Daocheng Yading
City guide · 12 tours
Three 6,000 m sacred peaks, glacial lakes at 4,600 m and twenty hours of road — the hardest, highest payoff in Sichuan.
Shunan Bamboo Sea
City guide · 12 tours
Seventy thousand mu of bamboo over twenty-eight hills, a red sandstone corridor under a closed green roof, and a banquet made entirely of bamboo.
Dujiangyan
City guide · 12 tours
Not a monument but a machine: three pieces of engineering with no dam, still doing their job after 2,270 years.
Qingcheng Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
The mountain where Daoism was organised, and the one Chengdu escapes to when the basin turns into an oven.
Qingdao
City guide · 12 tours
Red-tiled roofs, cold beer and a granite mountain that walks straight into the sea — the easiest good time on the Yellow Sea.
Mount Tai
City guide · 12 tours
1,545 metres, 6,290 stone steps and three thousand years of emperors — the one mountain in China that is also a document.
Jinan
City guide · 12 tours
A provincial capital with 700 springs under the pavement — people still queue at the spouts to fill their kettles.
Weihai
City guide · 12 tours
1,000 km of clean coast, a free bathing beach, the island where the Beiyang Fleet died — and thousands of wild swans every winter.
Qufu
City guide · 12 tours
One family, two thousand years of steles, and a ¥150 pass that covers the lot — the easiest serious day trip in Shandong.
Penglai
City guide · 12 tours
China's immortals' coast — a Song-dynasty naval harbour you can walk for free, a mythology nobody ever found, and the ferry to 32 islands.
Changdao
City guide · 12 tours
32 islands, one causeway, a ¥150 land pass, tens of thousands of gulls and nowhere you can drive — the place where everything happens by boat.
Suzhou
City guide · 12 tours
Two thousand five hundred years of canals, sixty surviving gardens, and a city that shuts its gates at half past five.
Zhouzhuang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine hundred years, fourteen bridges, one ticket — and a town that only makes sense before eight in the morning.
Tongli
City guide · 12 tours
Fifteen canals, seven islets, forty-nine bridges — and a town that still gets up at dawn because it lives here.
Wuxi
City guide · 12 tours
Taihu on one side, a Grand Buddha on the next hill, and ribs sweet enough to argue about — the most underrated city on the Yangtze delta.
Yangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A city built by salt merchants who had more money than restraint — gardens, a narrow lake, and the best breakfast in China.
Zhenjiang
City guide · 12 tours
Three hills, one ferry landing, and an unreasonable share of Chinese literature — the Yangtze city people drive past.
Changzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A 2,500-year-old canal city that built a dinosaur park and refuses to apologise for it.
Wuzhen
City guide · 12 tours
A town that is two towns: the older, quieter East Zone and the lit-up West Zone you sleep inside.
Xitang
City guide · 12 tours
Nine canals, 122 lanes, one long roofed corridor — and a town that still works for a living.
Hangzhou
City guide · 12 tours
A lake in the middle of a city, a tea village in the hills, and two thousand years of getting the mood right.
Xixi Wetland
City guide · 12 tours
Ten square kilometres of marsh inside Hangzhou, and the only way into half of it is a boat.
Ningbo
City guide · 12 tours
A 7,000-year-old port with Asia's oldest private library, a free waterfront 20 years older than Shanghai's, and the best seafood before the islands.
Mount Putuo
City guide · 12 tours
A Buddhist island with no cars, three great temples and a ¥10 lunch that is the point of the place.
Qiandao Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A thousand islands that did not exist sixty years ago, and the cleanest big-lake water in China.
Shaoxing
City guide · 12 tours
Two and a half thousand years of water-town China, and Lu Xun's house is free.
Zhoushan
City guide · 12 tours
1,390 islands, one road bridge in, and a harbour that lands more fish than almost anywhere on earth.
Hengdian
City guide · 12 tours
A backlot the size of a town, where the palaces are copies and the film crews are real.
Yandang Mountain
City guide · 12 tours
A volcano that weathering turned into scenery — 500-odd sights of peak, cave and waterfall across eight scenic areas.
Zhejiang
City guide · 12 tours
One small, mountainous, absurdly rich province that holds a lake, two canal towns, a Buddhist island and a dead volcano.
Hong Kong Outlying Islands
City guide · 12 tours
Two hundred-odd islands, half an hour of ferry from the financial district, and not a car on three of them.
Hong Kong Shopping
City guide · 12 tours
A duty-free port where the tag starts lower, two citywide sale seasons knock a third off, and every mall sits on an MTR exit.
Macao
City guide · 12 tours
Four hundred years of Portuguese streets, a fake Venice under a painted sky, and the best egg tart in Asia.
Urumqi
City guide · 12 tours
The city furthest from the sea, with a snow range on its doorstep and dinner starting at nine.
Hong Kong SAR, China
City guide · 11 tours
A harbour skyline you already know by heart, dim sum trolleys at dawn, and 260 islands an hour from the neon.
Taiwan, China
City guide · 11 tours
Night-market alleys, high-mountain railways, and a coastline that changes character every hundred kilometres.
Qinghai Lake
City guide · 12 tours
A 4,400 sq km inland sea at 3,200 m, ringed by rapeseed gold, prayer flags and the best cycling road in China.
Mount Emei
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,099-metre Buddhist summit you can reach by cable car before lunch — and a mountain full of monkeys that will absolutely rob you.
Beijing
City guide · 11 tours
Six centuries of imperial red walls, a Great Wall you can climb before lunch, and the best roast duck on earth.
Taipei
City guide · 11 tours
A 24-hour bookstore, a night market that never stops sizzling, and a city that apologises when you bump into it.
North Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Alpine lakes the colour of poured enamel, a village of log cabins under birch trees, and the last tear the Atlantic ever sheds.
Lanzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A city split in half by the Yellow River, where beef noodles are a breakfast ritual and the Silk Road still runs through the streets.
Mount Hua
City guide · 11 tours
Five granite peaks, one plank road bolted to a cliff face, and a sunrise that justifies the 2am start.
Dunhuang
City guide · 11 tours
A desert oasis where Buddhist cave art survived a thousand years and a crescent lake refused to dry up.
Gannan
City guide · 11 tours
433 kilometres of the Yellow River's first bend, a 3.5 km prayer-wheel circuit, and Tibetan grasslands almost nobody has commercialised yet.
Sichuan–Tibet Highway
City guide · 11 tours
2,142 kilometres of cliff-edge switchbacks, four of China's most beautiful mountains, and a road the Tibetans walk on their knees.
Kangding
City guide · 11 tours
The town that gave Asia its most famous love song, a 7,556m sacred peak on its doorstep, and the last real Tibetan town before the road climbs to Lhasa.
Lhasa
City guide · 12 tours
A city of prayer wheels and butter lamps at 3,700 metres, where the sun shines 3,000 hours a year and the world's highest palace watches over it all.
Nyingchi
City guide · 11 tours
Tibet's greenest corner — peach blossom valleys, a 7,782 m peak that hides from almost everyone, and the world's deepest canyon.
Namtso
City guide · 11 tours
A 1,920-square-kilometre sheet of impossible blue at 4,718 metres, ringed by snow peaks and prayer flags.
Chongqing
City guide · 12 tours
A vertical city of fog, cable cars and cliff-side stilt houses, where the火锅 never stops boiling and the night skyline outshines Hong Kong.
Qiandongnan
City guide · 11 tours
A thousand Miao households stacked up a mountainside, drum towers and wind-rain bridges in Dong villages, and a 600-year-old Ming garrison town on the road to Guiyang.
Libo
City guide · 11 tours
Emerald rivers threading through karst peaks, a 600-metre forest growing out of a riverbed, and China's largest wild plum grove.
Guiyang
City guide · 11 tours
China's summer capital at 1,100 metres, where the nights run on sour fish soup, street-side barbecue and mahjong that never quite stops.
Zhenyuan
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,000-year-old river town where the Wuyang River carves an S through the mountains and every lane hides a story.
Huangguoshu
City guide · 11 tours
Asia's biggest waterfall, and the only one on earth you can walk behind, above and around — plus 600-year-old Ming dynasty villages a short drive away.
Harbin
City guide · 11 tours
Minus 30 degrees, a frozen river you can walk across, and a cathedral built by Russians who never went home.
Yunnan
City guide · 11 tours
Snow mountains, tropical rainforest, twenty-five minorities and a plate of rice noodles — all in one province.
Shanghai
City guide · 11 tours
A 1920s waterfront of colonial banks facing a science-fiction skyline, soup dumplings you eat with a straw, and 20 million people moving like clockwork.
Zhangjiajie
City guide · 11 tours
Three thousand sandstone pillars straight out of Avatar, a glass skywalk bolted to a cliff, and a cable car that leaves from downtown.
Guangzhou
City guide · 11 tours
A 2,200-year-old trading port where dim sum is a religion, colonial islands sit beside 600-metre towers, and the food never stops.
Guilin
City guide · 11 tours
Karst peaks rising straight out of a green river, rice terraces carved into mountainsides, and the best bowl of noodles you'll eat in China.
Shenzhen
City guide · 11 tours
A fishing village that became a megacity in forty years — and it still has 500-year-old banyans, empty beaches and dim sum worth the border crossing.
Chengdu
City guide · 11 tours
A 3,000-year-old city where the schedule is tea, mahjong and hotpot — and the pandas are just the opening act.
Xinjiang
City guide · 11 tours
Snow peaks, grassland, desert and oasis — one-sixth of China, and the longest road you will ever ride.
Xi'an
City guide · 14 tours
Thirteen dynasties of emperors, a terracotta army buried for 2,200 years, and a walled city you can cycle in 100 minutes.
Qinghai
City guide · 11 tours
China's high-altitude blue heart: a salt lake you can walk on, a 3,200-metre sea, and yak butter tea at the roof of the world.
Tibet
City guide · 11 tours
A plateau the size of Western Europe where the sky starts at your feet, prayer flags carry the wind, and the roads run past 8,000-metre peaks.
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