Yuanmingyuan is located in Haidian District, the western suburb of Beijing, and is adjacent with Summer Palace. Firstly built in the 46th year during Emperor Kangxi's reign (1707), Yuanmingyuan is composed of three gardens: Yuanmingyuan, Changchunyuan and Qichunyuan. With the floor area of 350 hectares and building area of almost 200,000 square meters, Yuanmingyuan was a vast royal palatial garden established and operated for over 150 years by emperors in Qing Dynasty. Yuanmingyuan enjoys worldwide reputation for its grand land scale, outstanding construction skills, elegant architectural landscape, rich cultural collections as well as extensive and profound national culture implication, and is renowned as the “model of all garden construction arts” and the “Garden of Gardens”. In October 1860, the Anglo-French forces sacked and looted Yuanmingyuan and burned it to the ground.
In November 1976, the Administrative Office of Yuanmingyuan was established. In January 1988, Yuanmingyuan Park was announced as a key cultural relic protection site at the national level. On June 29, 1988, Yuanmingyuan Park was officially opened to the public. After requisition of land for two times in 1990 and 1993, Yuanmingyuan Park recovered all its land use right, with the land size equal to the size during the flouring period of Yuanmingyuan. In September 1996, Yuanmingyuan was named as a National Patriotism Education Base by six ministries and commissions. In November 1998, Yuanmingyuan Park was named as the Beijing National Defense Education Base by Beijing National Defense Education Commission. In September 2000, The Plan for Yuanmingyuan Park was officially approved by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. On November 20, 2008, Yuanmingyuan Park was awarded as one of the “Top 16 New Sceneries of Beijing”, and became one of the 16 charming new business cards which represented Beijing.
