It was 1987 when The Last Emperor arrived in Italian cinemas, opening before audiences the doors to a world that, until then, had seemed incredibly far away. I still remember that line outside the cinema. The anticipation, the curiosity, that feeling of being about to enter an unknown place. I could never have imagined that, once the lights in the theatre went out, something would remain with me for the rest of my life.
On the screen appeared the red walls of the Forbidden City, the golden rooftops gleaming in the sunlight, the immense courtyards wrapped in silence, and the melancholic story of a child barely two years old destined to become the last emperor of China.
It was in that moment that something was born inside me.
It was not simply the desire to discover a distant country. It was the desire to understand its soul, to travel through its places, to listen to its stories, to lose myself among ancient traditions and landscapes capable of telling the story of time better than any book. Today, I want to share that same passion with you, and to do so I could only return, in my imagination, to the place where it all began, because Beijing is not simply a city to visit. It is a city to experience with your eyes, your heart and your imagination, a city that belongs simultaneously to two worlds. On one side stands the modern capital, immense and vibrant, crossed by highly efficient subway lines, glass skyscrapers, creative districts, glowing signs and technology that accompanies every gesture of everyday life. On the other lies a much older city, one that continues to breathe behind centuries-old walls, among temples, imperial gardens and alleyways where time seems to have stopped.
And the beautiful thing is that these two souls do not fight each other: They walk together.
All it takes is to pass through a monumental gate and the noise of the metropolis seems to disappear. Suddenly, we find ourselves in the Beijing of the emperors, the city that for centuries stood at the heart of the greatest empire in Asia.
The history of this city stretches back thousands of years, but it was under the great Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties that the capital we can still recognise today truly took shape. Nothing was left to chance. Palaces, gates, temples and squares were arranged along an immense axis running through the city from north to south, following a vision of the universe in which every building was meant to reflect the harmony between Heaven and Earth.
And it is impossible not to be captivated by the Forbidden City.
For more than five centuries, it was the heart of the Chinese Empire. Twenty-four emperors lived here, the fate of the nation was decided here, and rituals that only a privileged few had the right to witness were celebrated here.
Today, those gates are no longer forbidden.
Walking through its courtyards means entering a place that still preserves an almost unreal beauty. The vermilion-red walls seem to guard ancient secrets, the roofs covered in golden-yellow tiles reflect the light with the same elegance they did centuries ago, and the dragons carved into the balustrades seem to watch silently over visitors. Behind the Forbidden City rises Jingshan Hill. When you reach the top, the view leaves you speechless. Before your eyes stretches a sea of perfectly aligned golden rooftops and, only from up there, can you truly understand how immense the city built for the emperors really was.
But Beijing’s true surprise comes when we leave the great avenues behind and lose ourselves in the hutongs, the ancient alleyways of the capital: Bicycles move slowly past traditional courtyard houses, small workshops display their crafts, elderly residents sit outside their homes talking, someone plays cards, someone else sips tea while watching life pass by. It is a more intimate, more human Beijing. Here we feel less like tourists and more like travellers and, almost without noticing it, the intense red of the imperial palaces gives way to the deep blue of the Temple of Heaven, one of the most poetic places in the city. Here, emperors came to pray for Heaven to grant abundant harvests. Every architectural detail carries a symbolic meaning: the circle represents Heaven, the square represents Earth, and every proportion tells of a philosophy that saw humankind as part of a greater balance.
But the Temple of Heaven is not only a historical place, it is one of the best places to observe life in Beijing.
In the morning, the great park fills with people. Some practise tai chi with slow, elegant movements, some dance, some sing, some stroll holding a fan in their hands, while others simply stop to chat, and it is here that the city truly reveals itself, not through its monuments, but through its people.
A little farther away, another place awaits us, capable of slowing down time: the Summer Palace.
The waters of Kunming Lake reflect pagodas, bridges and pavilions surrounded by greenery. Walking along the famous Long Corridor, decorated with thousands of paintings, gives the feeling of passing through a hand-painted landscape, while the wind ripples the water and the mountains seem to draw slowly closer. As we gradually leave the city behind, there is one place that no journey to the capital can truly overlook: The roads begin to climb, the mountains come closer and closer and, suddenly, a line appears on the horizon that seems to follow the breath of the earth, and there it is: Her Majesty, the Great Wall of China.
Her Majesty, the Great Wall of China
The first time you see it, it is difficult to find the words, because it does not appear to be simply a monument. It seems like an ancient creature climbing over the mountains, disappearing behind a ridge and reappearing farther away, following the contours of nature as though it had always existed. For more than two thousand years, it has continued to tell the same story.
Its origins date back to the time when China was divided into different kingdoms. Fortifications had already been built to defend borders, but it was the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shi Huang, around 220 BC, who connected many of those defences into a system designed to protect the empire from incursions from the north. Dynasty after dynasty, it was expanded, rebuilt, reinforced and transformed until it acquired, particularly during the Ming era, the monumental appearance we can admire today. Its foundations sink into stone, its bricks tell the story of the labour of entire generations, and the most astonishing thing is not only its length, but imagining how it was built. Enormous stones, bricks, timber and lime had to reach incredibly steep mountain ridges. Where the terrain allowed it, carts were used; elsewhere, mules and horses were employed; but often it was human strength alone that carried every single material up into the mountains.
Looking at a tower perched on a mountain peak, the question that naturally comes to mind is not who built it, but how every stone managed to reach all the way up there. It is a question that accompanies anyone who climbs those steps, because the Great Wall is not made only of stone. It is made of hardship, wind and waiting. We imagine it filled with sentries watching the horizon, with men spending freezing winters and scorching summers guarding an endless frontier. And after centuries of wars, dynastic changes, revolutions and storms, it is still there, filling us with wonder and joy as we look at it, immersing us once again in history.
Some sections of the Great Wall have been restored and still preserve the grandeur of the fortifications that once protected the Empire, while others have remained wilder, marked by wind, rain and the passing centuries. In some places, vegetation creeps between the stones, almost as though nature were slowly reclaiming what humankind had taken from the mountain, and the Wall seems to merge with the landscape until it becomes part of it. We begin to walk, following steps that are never the same height, facing sudden climbs and reaching one tower after another. Our breathing slows, our gaze stretches farther and, almost without noticing it, everything we had read before arriving here begins to become something real. The dates, the dynasties, the emperors and the kilometres are no longer merely words written in books: they are beneath our feet, in the worn stones, in the towers overlooking the valleys, in the mountains that seem to have no end. That is when we instinctively stop, place a hand on the stone and look into the distance. For a moment, we can try to imagine this same landscape hundreds of years ago, when sentries watched the horizon from those towers searching for suspicious movement, when smoke and fire were used to send signals along the frontier, and when men far from their homes spent days and nights up here, enduring the freezing cold of winter, the heat of summer and, above all, that wind that even today continues to run freely through the mountains.
And as we walk, it almost seems as though we can hear them.
The footsteps of a soldier on the stone, the call of a sentry from one tower to another, the sound of men carrying materials along slopes that even today seem impossible to reach. It is enough to look at a tower built on the summit of a ridge to wonder how they could possibly have carried stones, bricks, timber and everything needed to build it all the way up there. And it is precisely in that moment that the Wall ceases to be merely one of the wonders we have seen so many times in photographs and begins to reveal its most human dimension, because behind every stone there are hands that lifted it, behind every tower there are men who built and guarded it, and behind every stretch of wall there are stories that time has never handed down to us. We will never know the names of all those who passed through here, but walking along the Wall it is impossible not to think about their lives, their exhaustion, their fear, their hope of returning home and that endless frontier which, for them, was not a monument, but an everyday reality.
The ritual of the most emotional moments of the journey: We turn around and see the road we have travelled; then we look ahead and the Wall continues, disappearing into the horizon. For a few moments, it no longer matters how many kilometres it measures or which emperor ordered the construction of that particular section. All that remains are the mountains, the sky, the stone and the sound of the wind.
And in that silence, it almost seems as though two thousand years of history begin to breathe again.
The Great Wall was built to protect, control and define a frontier, to separate what belonged to the Empire from what lay beyond those mountains. And yet today, something extraordinarily different happens: people from every corner of the world walk on those same stones, speaking different languages, belonging to different cultures and carrying different stories, yet for a few moments they all look toward the same horizon.
A place created also to divide has become, through the centuries, a place capable of bringing people together.
Perhaps this is what makes the Great Wall so difficult to forget. It is not only its immensity, nor even the extraordinary achievement of having built it across such inaccessible mountains. It is the feeling of standing before something that has watched men, emperors, armies, dynasties and entire eras pass by and that, despite everything, is still there.
Beijing and the mountains surrounding it remind us that time does not necessarily erase what it encounters. Sometimes it wears it away, sometimes it transforms it, sometimes it covers it with grass and silence, but it can leave enough behind for someone, centuries later, to stop, place a hand on a stone and still try to imagine what once was.
On the Great Wall, that memory is everywhere. It runs between the towers, follows the mountains, hides among the worn stones and continues toward the horizon, we simply need to stop long enough to listen to it.
Modern Beijing: a perfect day in the capital, from breakfast to the lights of the night
After the silence of the mountains and the emotion of the Great Wall, we return to Beijing and allow the city to surprise us once again. Because it would be a mistake to think that the charm of the Chinese capital belongs only to its emperors, temples and ancient walls. Beijing can be profoundly contemporary, young, elegant, creative and, when evening arrives, incredibly lively as well. The change can be felt almost without noticing it. The mountains disappear behind us, the roads become wider, traffic increases and on the horizon glass towers, illuminated architecture and glowing signs reappear, completely transforming the landscape. It is like returning to the same place while travelling through several centuries in just a few hours.
To discover this Beijing, we need to head towards Sanlitun, in the Chaoyang district. Here, for a few hours, we forget the imperial palaces and encounter a cosmopolitan city made of fashion, restaurants, cafés, boutiques, music and nightlife. At its heart is Taikoo Li Sanlitun, a large open-air shopping complex that has become one of the landmarks of contemporary Beijing, especially popular with young people, fashion enthusiasts and an international community that has long characterised this part of the capital. It is pleasant to arrive in the late afternoon, when shopping slowly begins to give way to evening. We stop for a coffee, browse the shop windows, observe the looks of the young people strolling through the neighbourhood and, little by little, the terraces begin to fill and the lights of the venues come on.
It is another China.
A China that experiments, follows trends, listens to international music and invents new languages without completely forgetting what it once was. If we feel like having a drink and listening to music, we can explore the Sanlitun and Workers’ Stadium area, where cocktail bars, pubs and venues that stay open until late are concentrated. Some prefer a quiet drink, some look for live music and others want to continue the night dancing. Places such as Swing, Sanlitun Jazz Bar and Revolution are among the possibilities in the area, while around the stadium the atmosphere becomes decidedly more nocturnal.
But Beijing is not only about clubs and cocktails.
For a completely different evening, we can head to Houhai, where the modern face of the city once again blends with the ancient one. When evening falls, the lights of the venues reflect on the water and walking along the lake offers a much more romantic and relaxed atmosphere. We can sit down, have a drink, listen to music and watch a Beijing that seems to slow down once again.
And then there is art.
In the 798 Art District, old industrial buildings have been transformed into galleries, studios, exhibition spaces, cafés and design shops. Here, we can spend hours simply walking around, moving from a contemporary artwork to an old industrial structure, from a monumental sculpture to a small café hidden among the buildings. It is one of the places that best illustrates how Beijing knows how to reinvent itself without erasing what existed before.
And of course, we cannot talk about modern Beijing without sitting down at the table, because food too is a journey.
Beijing is a city where you can eat continuously, moving from grand restaurants to small neighbourhood kitchens. We can taste jiaozi, Chinese filled dumplings; zhajiangmian, noodles dressed with a thick sauce made from fermented soybean paste and served with vegetables; spring rolls, tofu, stir-fried vegetables, aubergine dishes, mushrooms, noodles and countless regional preparations that have arrived in the capital from every corner of China.
And for those who, like me, prefer vegetarian cuisine, Beijing can become an entirely different discovery: tofu, vegetables, mushrooms, aubergines, noodles, dumplings and ancient preparations also linked to Buddhist tradition allow us to discover Chinese cuisine far beyond the image we often have of it in the West.
Beijing by night: A street illuminated by a long succession of red lanterns, restaurants open until late, crowded tables, voices, steam and aromas drifting from the kitchens. This is Guijie, also known as Ghost Street, one of the most famous areas for eating in the evening and continuing late into the night. Here, there is no need to look for the most elegant restaurant, just let curiosity guide you: watch the dishes arriving at the tables, follow the scent of spices and taste something we had not planned to try. Because truly getting to know a city also means this: eating where the people who live there eat and, when evening arrives, allowing ourselves to be carried away by its rhythm.
And it is precisely by observing the people that we understand just how different today’s Beijing is from the solemn image with which we began our journey. We see young people going out together after work, fashion-conscious boys and girls, families in restaurants, friends gathered around a hot pot, people ordering and paying for almost everything through their phones, bicycles and electric scooters crossing the city and contemporary cafés hidden even inside old hutongs.
The most fascinating thing is that nothing ever seems truly out of place.
We can spend the morning standing before an imperial throne, the afternoon in a contemporary art gallery, have dinner with a recipe handed down through generations and end the evening on a rooftop looking out over the illuminated skyline. Beijing is not a city suspended in its own past, nor is it a metropolis that has decided to forget it. It is a city capable of constantly moving from one to the other, forcing us each time to change the way we look at it.
The morning had told us about the emperors.
The Great Wall had told us about the centuries.
Now, among music, aromas, crowded tables and lights glowing late into the night, Beijing finally tells us about the people who live there today.
