Five days in Beijing: A capital built to make you feel small

The gate with the portrait on it, and the last survivor of the four that once led into the Imperial City. Passing underneath costs nothing. Climbing up to the balcony costs a little and gives you the length of the square, which is worth the ticket once.

A Ming dynasty shopping street a few minutes south of the square, burned out in 1900 and rebuilt as a shopping street again. The main drag is touristy; the narrow lanes running off it, full of small shops and old pharmacy signs, are not.

Stalls of Beijing snacks, sweet and savoury, a short walk from the square. Graze rather than sit down, and treat it as a first look at what the city eats.

Enter by the Meridian Gate and the courtyards open out one after another, each larger than the last, until the three great halls appear on their triple marble terrace. Behind them the scale drops to bedrooms, studies and the room the Empress Dowager Cixi ruled from behind a curtain for forty seven years. The halls can no longer be entered, so the interiors are seen from the doorways. Arrive at opening for perhaps twenty minutes of empty courtyard.

A walled palace within the palace in the northeastern corner, built for the Qianlong Emperor to retire into and never lived in, with a nine dragon screen in glazed tile at its entrance. It now holds the gold, jade and jewelled work, along with a stone drum gallery and an open air theatre. Separate ticket, bought at the door, and it sits on the way to the north gate.

Food inside the palace is poor and expensive. Walk out of the north gate and cross the road, where the streets towards the lake have noodle shops and dumpling counters at ordinary prices.

The artificial hill opposite the north gate, raised from the earth dug out of the palace moat. Ten minutes of steps buys you the only view that shows the Forbidden City as a single object, a sea of yellow roofs with the city stacked up behind it. Best in the last hour of daylight.

A restored section running along a green ridge northeast of the city, with battlements on both sides rather than one and far fewer people on it than Badaling. Take the cable car up, walk east until the restoration stops, and come back down on the toboggan.

Back in the city, Ghost Street runs for a kilometre under red lanterns and does not really get going until other places are closing. Crayfish in season, hotpot all year, and queues outside the good places at eleven at night.

Kunming Lake, Longevity Hill and the Long Corridor, an imperial garden the size of a district. Allow three hours to do it properly, and take the boat across the lake rather than walking back the way you came.

Two towers facing each other across a small square, built to mark the hours for a city with no clocks. Drummers still perform on the hour or so, and the climb up gives you a rooftop view over grey tiles in every direction.

Three connected lakes just west of the drum tower, ringed by willows, and the best evening walk in Beijing. The northern shore is quiet and residential; the southern end turns into bars and noise after dark. Both are worth seeing, in that order.

An imperial altar complex inside the greenest park in the city, where emperors came once a year to ask for a good harvest. Go into the park at seven for the morning crowd, then buy the through ticket for the temple buildings when they open.