The Summer Palace (Yiheyuan), located in the northwestern outskirts of Beijing, is the largest and most famous imperial garden in China. The palace features hundreds of architecturally distinct buildings, halls, pavilions, pagodas, bridges and corridors dispersed among magnificent and elegant gardens. It has an area of 290 hectares (717 acres), three quarters of which is water. The palace has three unique areas: Court Area, Longevity Hill Area and Kunming Lake Area.
The garden was originally named the Garden of Clear Ripples (Qingyi). It was a summer resort for the emperors in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). In 1860, the garden was burnt down by the Anglo-French Allied Forces. In 1866, Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt the garden using embezzled funds from the imperial navy and named it the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan). In 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion, the Eight-Power Allied Force ransacked the palace. After another reconstruction in 1903, the garden was restored to its original beauty and magnificence. As the grandest garden in China, it was added to the World Culture Heritage list in 1998.