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798 Art District
A disused and converted electronics factory, 798 Art District is Běijīng's leading concentration of contemporary art galleries. The industrial complex celebrates its proletarian roots in the communist heyday of the 1950s via retouched bright red Maoist slogans decorating gallery interiors, scattered effigies of Mao and burly, lantern-jawed workers.
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Ancient Observatory
Star-gazing may well be on the back foot in today's Běijīng - it would take a supernova to penetrate the haze that frequently blankets the nocturnal sky - but the Chinese capital has a sparkling history of astronomical observation. The observatory is the only surviving example of several constructed during the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties - was built between 1437 and 1446 to facilitate both astrological predictions and seafaring navigation.
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Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum
Located within what is called the Hall of Jupiter (太岁殿; Tàisuì Diàn) is the excellent Beijing Ancient Architecture Museum (; - ) which informatively narrates the elements of traditional Chinese building techniques. Brush up on your dǒugǒng brackets and sǔnmǎo joints, get the lowdown on Běijīng's courtyard houses, while eyeballing detailed models of standout temple halls and pagodas from across the land. English captions.
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Beijing Natural History Museum
The main entrance to this overblown, creeper-laden museum is hung with portraits of the great natural historians, including Darwin and Linnaeus (here spelt Linnacus). Escort kiddies to the revamped dinosaur hall facing you as you enter, which presents itself with an overarching skeleton of a mamenchisaurus jingyanensis - a vast sauropod that once roamed China - and a much smaller protoceratops .
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Beijing Planetarium
Across from the zoo, children will find something to marvel at among the telescopes, models of the planets and the solar system, and the variety of shows in the new building, even though the typical absence of thorough English captions can make full comprehension an astronomical task.
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Beijing Police Museum
Infested with propaganda perhaps, but some riveting exhibits make this a fascinating exposé of Běijīng's dà gài mào (local slang for the constabulary). Learn how Běijīng's first Public Security Bureau (PSB) college operated from the Dongyue Temple in 1949 and find out how officers tackled the 'stragglers, disbanded soldiers, bandits, local ruffians, hoodlums and despots…' planted in Běijīng by the Kuomintang (KMT).
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Beijing Wangfujing Paleolithic Museum
Archaeologists and anthropologists will be rewarded at this simple museum detailing the tools and relics (stone flakes, bone scrapers, fragments of bone etc) of Late Pleistocene Man who once inhabited Běijīng. The discoveries on display were unearthed during the construction of Oriental Plaza in 1996. To find the museum, take exit 'A' from the Wangfujing metro station.
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Capital Museum
With Běijīng busily hatching a huge and disparate brood of new and often rather pointless museums, this modern and sleek addition is a showpiece achievement. Staging a headline-grabbing exhibition in 2006 from the collection of the British Museum, the museum aims at high-profile exhibitions from abroad while maintaining permanent displays of ancient bronzes, Buddhist statues, jade, calligraphy, paintings and ceramics.
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Central Academy Of Fine Arts Gallery
A short stroll from Wangfujing Dajie and part of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, this rather old-fashioned but centrally located exhibition hall displays a selection of Chinese art in a variety of media over three floors.
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China Art Museum
This revamped museum has received a healthy shot of imagination and flair, with absorbing exhibitions from abroad promising doses of colour and vibrancy. Běijīng's art lovers have lapped up some top notch presentations here, from the cream of Italian design to modern art works from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
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China National Museum
Housed in a sombre 1950s edifice, this museum is a work in progress, suffering from chronic lighting, a tawdry layout and sporadic English captions. At the time of writing only three halls were open, the most absorbing of which houses the gorgeous bronzes and ceramics of the Selected Treasures of the National Museum of China - look out for the Bronze Rhino-Shaped Zun inlaid with gold and silver designs from the Western Han. The cheesy waxworks museum is mildly diverting.
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Courtyard Gallery
Recently relocated from its famous location in the basement of the namesake restaurant just east of the Forbidden City, this gallery is a trendy component of the flourishing contemporary art scene in Caochandi, a few kilometres northeast of the 798 Art District .
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Creation Gallery
Opened and curated by the son of celebrated landscape artist Li Keran (1907-89), this gallery specialises in contemporary works. It's a favourite place for travellers to scoop up prints, sculpture and oil paintings by up-and-coming artists from all over China.
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Huguang Guild Hall
Dating to 1807. this theatre is decorated like the Zhengyici Theatre, with balconies surrounding the canopied stage. It is here that the Kuomintang, led by Dr Sun Yat-sen, was established in 1912. The interior is magnificent, coloured in red, green and gold, and decked out with tables and a stone floor. There's also a very small opera museum (around Y10 ) opposite the theatre displaying operatic scores, old catalogues and other paraphernalia.
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Imperial Archives
The old Imperial Archive is the former repository for the imperial records, decrees, the 'Jade Book' (the imperial genealogical record) and huge encyclopaedic works, including the Yongle Dadian and the Daqing Huidian . You can peer through the closed door and make out the chests in which the archives were stored. With strong echoes of the splendid imperial palace, the courtyard contains well-preserved halls and the Wan Fung Art Gallery.
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Imperial City Exhibition
Substantial portions of Běijīng survive solely in a twilight world of fading nostalgia. This fascinating museum is devoted to one of the city's most splendid creations: the Imperial City (皇城; Huáng Chéng), which - beyond its fragments - exists in name alone. The museum is the centrepiece of the only extant chunk of the Imperial City Wall, which once encompassed a chunk of Běijīng nearly seven times the size of the Forbidden City.
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Lao She Museum
This modest courtyard museum is dedicated to one of Běijīng's most popular 20th-century writers. Author of Rickshaw Boy and Tea House, and former teacher at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, Lao She (1899-1966) tragically committed suicide by throwing himself into a Běijīng lake during the Cultural Revolution (whispers of murder continue).
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Lu Xun Museum
Lu Xun (1881-1936), born in Shàoxīng in Zhèjiāng province, is often regarded as the father of modern Chinese literature. As a writer, Lu Xun, who first trained in medicine, articulated a deep yearning for reform by mercilessly exposing the foibles of the Chinese people's character. Hampered by a shortage of English captions, the museum's collection of photos and manuscripts remains largely impenetrable to all but the most erudite.
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Mao Dun Former Residence
Deep in the heart of the historic hútòng quadrant southeast of the Drum and Bell Towers is this small and unassuming museum. Mao Dun was the pen name of Shen Yanbing (1896-1981), who was born into an elite family in Zhèjiāng province but educated in Běijīng. In 1920 he helped found the Literary Study Society, an association promoting literary realism. The museum is typically parsimonious and low-key.
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Mei Lanfang Former Residence
Place of pilgrimage for Beijing opera aficionados, this former sìhéyuàn (courtyard house) of actor Mei Lanfang is tucked away in a hútòng named after the nearby remains of Huguo Temple. Beijing opera was popularised in the West by Mei Lanfang (1894-1961). His former residence has been preserved as a museum, replete with costumes, furniture, opera programmes and video presentations of his opera performances.
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Military Museum
This hulking monolith of a building topped with a communist star is purely for military enthusiasts. Cold War-era F-5 fighters, the much larger F-7 and F-8s, tanks, and HQ-2 (Red Flag-2) surface-to-air missiles are down below, while upstairs bristles with further weaponry and a heavy-going gallery of statues of military and political top brass. In the forecourt you can clamber aboard a missile boat for around Y5 ).
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Paleozoological Museum Of China
A little bit cheesy, with an impressive tally of zero English captions, but young palaeontologists can scurry among the dinosaur remains and legions of Chinese schoolchildren, gawping at skeletons of Tyrannosaurus Rex and Tsingtaosaurus and examining the parrot-like beak of Psittacosaurus .
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Poly Art Museum
This excellent museum displays Shang and Zhou dynasty bronzes and carved stone Buddhist effigies sculpted between the Northern Wei and Tang dynasties. It's a sublime display but note the often unaccommodating opening hours for individuals.
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Red Gate Gallery
Beneath the giant wooden rafters of the ancient Dongbianmen Watchtower, in a room cooled by vast slate floors, hangs an array of avant-garde art. Established by an Australian art historian, Red Gate Gallery displays Beijing's most innovative and electric modern art.
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Science & Technology Museum
Some exhibits at this museum are showing their age, but kids can run riot among the main hall's three floors of hands-on displays. Watch industrial robots perform a flawless Taichi sword routine, try chatting with the speech robot who only seems able to say '对不起，我没有听懂你的话' ('Sorry, I didn't catch you'), follow a maglev train gliding along a stretch of track or test out a bullet-proof vest with a sharp pointy thing.
