Sights—Tiananmen Square; the Forbidden City; the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower; the Summer Palace; the Temple of Heaven; the Lama Temple; hutong neighborhoods, CCTV Tower, Olympic Park, a day trip to the Great Wall; Dashanzhi art district.

Museums—Beijing Museum of Natural History; the National Art Museum of China; Beijing Capital Museum.

Memorable Meals—Peking duck at Dadong Roast Duck Restaurant; a meal fit for an emperor at Fangshan Restaurant; a Xinjiang meal at Afunti (complete with ethnic music and dance); flash-boiled lamb at Neng Ren Ju; a Hakka meal at Lao Hanzi.

Late Night—Bars and clubs in the renovated hutong lanes; the Old American Embassy near Tiananmen Square.

Walks—Make your way up Wangfujing, one of Beijing's prime shopping streets; stroll around the lake in Beihai Park or in the remaining hutongs (alleyways) in Dongcheng District; walk through, across or around Tiananmen Square.

Especially for Kids—The Blue Zoo Beijing, which takes children under the sea—literally—in an acrylic-covered moving walkway that runs underneath the main tank; the Beijing Zoo and Aquarium.

Beijing is geographically vast, exceedingly flat and largely treeless (except in parks, scenic spots and areas around the old legation quarter), with a mishmash of ancient, Communist and, increasingly, futuristic high-rise architectural styles. Sights of interest to visitors are scattered. Tiananmen Square is the heart of the modern city, but no one would call it downtown. The area east of Tiananmen along Chang'an Dajie, focused around the China World Center and CCTV Tower, is becoming the city's modern commercial business district. We recommend traveling with a good map (printed in both Chinese and English) and having your destinations written down in Chinese characters (ask your hotel's staff to help you). For planning purposes, you may find it helpful to know the district where an attraction is located. For instance, Haidian District (Beijing Zoo, Summer Palace) is to the northwest, Chaoyang District (an embassy and nightlife area popular with expatriates and nouveau-riche Chinese) is to the east, and Chongwen District (Temple of Heaven) is to the southeast. When you're out and about, you'll discover that the city is built along avenues aligned in a rigid grid. Roads may change their names several times as they go across town.

Several "ring" roads form concentric circles in and around the city, with Tiananmen at the center. Somewhat confusingly, the first is not actually a ring road—it is made up of a series of small local streets. The Second Ring Road (Erhuan Lu) roughly follows the location of the old city wall, which was dismantled in the 1950s. A subway line also follows this route. The Third Ring Road (Sanhuan Lu) goes mostly through residential areas but also hits some major commercial districts, and the Fourth Ring Road (Sihuan Lu) runs primarily through suburbs and residential districts. The Fifth and Sixth Ring roads, which visitors are unlikely to use, effectively orbit the city.

The light-rail system makes a huge arc across the north of the city and connects Dongzhimen (in the east) to Xizhimen (in the west) through some of the city's university areas.

Beijing, planted on the edge of a fertile coastal plain, rose from agrarian roots. Nomadic tribes invaded and destroyed it many times over the course of several centuries, but the city was always rebuilt. By the fifth century BC, the area had developed sophisticated administrative networks under a feudal system. It became part of a vast, technologically advanced Chinese empire that was protected—and isolated—from the rest of the world by harsh terrain and a huge wall.

In the 13th century AD, the area emerged as a world capital when Genghis Khan seized control and made it the center of his vast empire. The city was rebuilt as a walled enclave (for the imperial household) surrounded by a checkerboard pattern of streets. This was the time of Marco Polo's travels—a period of extraordinary prosperity and power in China. Khan's grandson Kublai later ruled a huge Eurasian empire from there.

The area blossomed again with the ascension of the Ming dynasty in the 15th century. Vast sums were spent to refurbish the city as a major capital, called Beijing ("Northern Capital"). An immense imperial palace was built, and the Great Wall was fortified and extended by millions of laborers over a period of 100 years. Many of the city's best-known artifacts are legacies from that era, when architecture, and arts and letters flourished. The Ming were overthrown by northern invaders, the Manchu Qing, who preserved and expanded the city during the following 300 years. Elaborate palaces and gardens still remain from what was China's last dynasty.

A chaotic period of warlord rule followed the downfall of the last emperor in 1911. Beijing became a flashpoint of political and cultural dissent, embodied by a student-led demonstration in 1919 and calls for reforms in government, women's rights, science, literature and the arts. The beginning of the Chinese Communist Party dates from this time, when a young Mao Zedong worked as a librarian at Beijing University.

A struggle for power ensued between communists and the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang), the leading political force that wanted to supplant the warlords and reunify the country under a military dictatorship. The struggle was temporarily interrupted when Japanese forces occupied the city during World War II. But after that war ended, a civil war broke out. It ended in 1949 when communist forces entered Beijing unopposed. The Nationalists (led by Chiang Kai-shek) fled to Taiwan, taking the country's entire gold reserves, many art treasures and much of the air force and navy. The People's Republic of China was founded 1 October of that year in Beijing.

During the following decades, Beijing became the center of a new kind of empire. Mao tried to restore central rule, instill self-sufficiency and protect the country from outsiders, as well as to rebuild an economy devastated by huge inequalities. He oversaw the building of huge dams, canals and power-generating stations (instead of grand palaces and temples), but the country was still underdeveloped compared with the Western world. A power struggle in Beijing between moderate reformers and Mao's revolutionary socialists resulted in the devastating Cultural Revolution from 1966 when Mao encouraged zealous Red Guards to root out his political enemies within the Chinese Communist Party. The initiative, which lasted until Mao's death in 1976, resulted in the persecution of many intellectuals and would-be reformers and effectively crippled the nation's development. Since Mao's death, more moderate leaders, such as the late premier Deng Xiaoping, have opened the doors to trade opportunities and modernization.

Today, the regime, under President Hu Jintao (who replaced Jiang Zemin in 2003), has kept in line with the policies set by Deng and continued by Jiang. Following its accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, China's economic development continues to progress at breakneck speed, to the continual amazement, and some degree of concern, of the world. Trade, manufacturing, the stock market and real estate are booming. However, crucial situations still loom: bureaucratic corruption, Xinjiang separatism, human rights, Taiwan questions, a huge migrant-worker population, nationwide pollution, urban overcrowding, inflation and an economy in danger of overheating are among the problems that China must resolve in order to achieve its aims.

Beijing is now preparing for its moment in the spotlight: the 2008 Olympic Games. To China, hosting the Olympics is an affirmation that it is a modern nation, ready to sit at the table with the other major countries of the world. But the question is, at what price? Beijing residents and visitors together mourn the death of many of Beijing's most charming historic areas, bulldozed to make way for the construction of glass and steel symbols of "modernization" as the city prepares to turn its face to the world. It's a gamble that will shape the city's character for decades beyond the Olympic Games.

Beijing is built on strict cosmological principles, with the Forbidden City the center point of a north-south axis, known as a dragon's vein, which also includes Qianmen and the Drum Tower. The construction of Olympic Park, on the outskirts of the city directly north of the Forbidden City, adheres to this axial template.

The eerie humming sound you hear above your head in the springtime is probably a flock of pigeons, whose owners have attached tubes to their legs to make an airborne symphony as they fly.

Beijing is constructing the world's largest Ferris wheel, which will stand 682 ft/208 m high when it opens at Chaoyang Park in early 2009.

The 91,000-seat Olympic Stadium, designed by Hertzog & de Meuron, is nicknamed the Bird's Nest, as its structure resembles a Chinese delicacy.

In late 2007, Fendi hosted the first catwalk fashion show on the Great Wall of China.

Space is at a premium in crowded Beijing, so many older residents keep crickets or songbirds in cages as pets to keep them company as they pass the time in the city's parks.