Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall

Beijing Planning Exhibition Hall is located on Qianmen East Street to the southeast of Tiananmen Square, the central landmark of the capital city. This urban planning museum has four stories, covering an area of 16,000 square meters (19,136 square yards) with half of it serving as the exhibition area. There are many different exhibition zones showing different contents, including the transition through history of this ancient city, the planning of the Olympic stadiums, and the future blueprint of a 'green' Beijing, transportation and infrastructures modernization. With not only large amount of pictures and documentations, the exhibition hall also uses multimedia methods to demonstrate the history and future planning of the city.
 Once you enter the Planning Exhibition Hall, you will see a hemisphere copper sculpture with a length of 2.63 meters (8.6 feet), width of 2.05 meters (6.7 feet) and height of 1.57 meters (5.2 feet). This sculpture is called Beijing Gulf. It reproduces the geographical condition of the city with the scale of 1:60,000, which is a plain with mountains on three sides. On the sculpture, you can identify important traffic trunk lines, such as the 2nd Ring Road and the 3rd Ring Road, and river system.
 Near the lobby's escalator area, there is a bronze relief named Old City of Beijing, hanging on the wall. It is about 10 meters (32.8 feet) high and 9 meters (29.5 feet) wide. The relief reflects the whole structure and main characteristics of the city in 1949 with the scale of 1:1,000. Streets, houses, trees and lakes can all be seen on this relief. According to the statistics, there are 118,000 houses and 60,000 trees carved on it. You can easily identify pine trees of the Temple of Heaven, roof of the Forbidden City, water system, and old courtyards.

On the second floor of the Planning Exhibition Hall, the largest area is the Planning Exhibition of Districts and Counties. This part introduces the planning and construction work and the development aim of every region of the city. There is also a diorama in this area. Another area worth visiting is Beijing – The World City. It represents the city's beautiful scenery using the veil film technology together with the city model.
 On the third floor, Model of Beijing City Planning is in a bold position. It demonstrates both ancient and modern charms of the city with a scale of 1:750. The whole area of this model is 302 square meters (361 square yards).

Then, there is the Model of the Forbidden City right next to it. With a length of 9 meters (10 yards) and a width of 4.8 meters (5.2 yards), it represents the panorama of the Forbidden City according to the ratio of 1:200. The background lighting and music make this model very sacred.

The Ancient City Evolution Area displays the 3,000-year city construction history and 850-year capital history. This area consists of Yuan-Ming-Qing Dynasty Mirage Cinema, an electronic realistic painting scroll, and white marble relieves. In the cinema, you will find the historical figures of the three dynasties (1271 – 1911 AD), who had made very important contributions to the city construction. Painted by a famous Chinese painting master, the original work of the painting scroll took five years to complete. With more than 5,000 figures and hundreds of constructions, this scroll reproduces the landscape of the old city in the 1930s and 1940s.
 The exhibitions of Urban Overall Plan, Low-carbon Eco-city, Transportation, and Olympic Venues, as well as two movie theaters: Multimedia Movie Hall and Dynamic Movie hall, are all located on the fourth floor.

There are two movies shown in the Multimedia Movie Hall, City of Eternity and Future City. The first one is about the city's 850-year capital history, and the second one gives detailed information of the city's general plan from 2004 to 2020. In the Dynamic Movie Hall, it plays The Rail Transit of Beijing. Travelling through time from 2069, this movie takes audiences reviewing the development history of the city's rail transit and envisioning the future plan of the rail transit.
 By subway
Take subway Line 2, get off at Qianmen Station, get out from Exit B and walk east.

By bus:
1. Take bus 8, 9, 20, 44, 622, or Special Line 2, and get off at Qianmen East Station.
2. Take bus 5, 8, 17, 20, 22, 48, 59, 66, 67, 82, 93, 120, 599, 622, Tourist Bus Line 1, Tourist Bus Line 2, Sightseeing Line 1, Sightseeing Line 2, BRT Line 1, Special Line 4, Special Line 7, or Special Line 11, and get off at Qianmen Station.
3. Take bus 2, 5, 120, Sightseeing Line 1, or Sightseeing Line 2, and get off at Tiananmen Square East Station.
Beijing Bus / Subway Search
 

Admission Fee	Free
Opening Hours	9:00 - 17:00 from Tuesday to Sunday; ticketing stops 16:00
Timetable of Multimedia Movie Hall ( English Movies)	10:00, 11:00, 14:30, 15:30