Tiananmen Square (gate of Heavenly Peace)

    The first stop for any visitor to Beijing is Tiananmen Square. Physically at the city's centre, symbolically it's the heart of China, and the events it has witnessed have shaped the history of the People's Republic from its inception. Chairman Mao lies here in his marble mausoleum, with the Great Hall of the people to the west and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution to the east. Monumental architecture that's much, much older lies just to the north - the Forbidden City of the Emperors, now open to all.

    Covering more than forty hectares, Tiananmen Square (Gate of Heavenly Peace) must rank as the greatest public square on earth. It's a modern creation, in a city that traditionally had no squares, as classical Chinese town planning did not allow for places where crowds could gather. Tiananmen Square only came into being when imperial offices were cleared from either side of the great processional way that led south from the palace to Qianmen and the Temple of Heaven. The ancient  north-south axis of the city was thus destroyed and the broad east-west thoroughfare, Chanan Jie, that now carries millions of cyclists every day past the front of the Forbidden City, had the walls across its path removed. In the words of one of the architects: "The very map of Beijing was a reflection of the feudal society, it was meant to demonstrate the power of the emperor. We had to transform it, we had to make Beijing into the capital of socialist China."

Attractions of Beijing Travel