9 of the Best Temples in Beijing

Topping the list of must-see temples in Beijing is the Temple of Heaven. A UNESCO-listed complex with 92 buildings and 600 rooms, it’s China’s best preserved imperial sacrifice site, and generations of emperors made offerings to heaven for the harvest here. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, a 3-tier building with conical roofs flowing out like rice farmers’ hats, is the signature example of iconic temples in Beijing. Alongside the Forbidden City (Palace Museum), the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), and the Great Wall of China, it’s a staple on Beijing history tours and day trips.

While not as large as the Qufu Temple of Confucius (Kong Miao) in Confucius’ home town of Qufu, Beijing’s Confucius Temple offers more than 700 years of scholarship, making it one of the most historic temples in Beijing. Terracotta-tiled roofs, scarlet halls, echoing courtyards, a forest of stone stelae, and a tangled, ancient cypress tree create a sense of calm and tranquility. Beijing tours that visit here also stop by the Imperial College next door, an early university that’s included in the ticket price.

Despite the name, the Beijing Working People’s Cultural Palace was built in 1420 as a temple for emperors to worship their ancestors, the Imperial Ancestral Temple. Shady cypress groves and grand red, blue, and terracotta structures reflect the style of the Forbidden City nearby—but tickets cost a fraction of the price, and as long as you ignore the flood of Chinese brides, the site is generally tranquil. The Sacrificial Hall is the star of the show.

The best known of all the Buddhist temples in Beijing, the Lama Temple, as the name suggests, is a Tibetan Buddhist place of worship. (Yes, it’s lama, in the Himalayan sense of “monk,” not llama in the Andean sense of “fluffy animal.”) Incense smoulders and prayer wheels spin as pilgrims make their way through a succession of halls and courtyards to a towering sandalwood Buddha statue and a beautifully carved mountain featuring 500 metal sculptures of arhats (Buddhist disciples). It’s the most popular temple after the Temple of Heaven on Beijing temple tours and cultural day tours.

Also known as the Azure Clouds Temple, the Temple of Azure Clouds, and the Blue Cloud Temple, Biyun Temple’s serene surroundings (at least on weekdays) make it one of the most beautiful temples in Beijing, and a great choice for photographers. Set on a hillside in Fragrant Hills Park (Xiangshan Gongyuan) in Beijing’s Western Hills, the soaring white marble Indian-style pagoda looks particularly beautiful when the fall colors come in. Don’t miss the extraordinary Hall of 500 Arhats with its almost life-size models of 500 Buddhist disciples, all with different personalities and expressions.

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Outside the city, in Beijing’s Western Hills, the Pool and Mulberry Tree Temple (also known as Tanzhe Si or Tanzhe Temple) is Beijing’s oldest temple, with a story that dates back more than 1,700 years. Some of the monks who lived and died here over the years were buried in the woodland under pagodas of a range of styles, in what’s now known as the Pagoda Forest. Other highlights include a gnarled gingko tree, allegedly more than 1,000 years old, and the Floating Cups Pavilion, where guests played a traditional drinking game.

There are many more beautiful temples than Dong Yue Miao (Dongyue Temple) in Beijing, but it’s the vivid depictions of Taoist hell, displayed in a series of 70 or so dioramas featuring animal-headed demons and gothic torture, that stick in the mind. Beijing’s answer to Dante’s Inferno (or Singapore’s Haw Par Villa), it’s primarily dedicated to Mt. Tai (Tai Shan), one of China’s sacred Taoist mountains, but has an entire hall for worshipping the god who manages hell.

Also known as Wofo Temple and the Temple of the Reclining Buddha, the Temple of the Sleeping Buddha (Wofosi) sits in the Beijing Botanical Garden amid the city’s Western Hills. Apart from the pleasures of walking through the elaborate gardens up to the temple, the highlight here is the giant bronze Buddha statue—he’s depicted not actually sleeping, but on the verge of achieving nirvana through the death of his mortal body.

For millennia, bells kept time and called worshippers to prayer across China, and Dazhong Temple housed one of the biggest: the 22-foot-tall (6.75-meter-tall) Yongle Bell, which weighs nearly 51 tons (46 tonnes). Today, although their music is silenced, its echoing halls are home to a precious selection of beautifully sculpted temple bells. You’ll often see the name written Dazhongsi, which people usually translate as Big Bell Temple or Great Bell Temple.