The Peninsula Beijing

The Peninsula Beijing stands at 8 Jinyu Hutong, Goldfish Lane, off Wangfujing in the old centre of Beijing. It opened in 1989 as The Palace Hotel, has carried the Peninsula name since 2006, and after a renovation completed in 2017 it has 230 rooms and suites, fewer than half the 525 it had before.

The renovation took rooms away on purpose.

Half the rooms, twice the space

The work cost about RMB 890 million, some US$123 million, and was led by the Hong Kong designer Henry Leung of CAP Atelier. Every unit was rebuilt as a small suite, with a separate bedroom and living area, a dressing room and a bathroom planned like a spa, and the entry rooms average 65 square metres, which made them the largest of their kind in the city when the hotel reopened. Among the 61 suites, the Beijing Suites have their own dining areas and cinema rooms, and the Peninsula Suite is modelled on a residence of the Qing dynasty.

Leung set imperial Chinese references against contemporary art and local craft, and opened the lobby into a three-storey atrium.

An arcade that came first

The hotel's shopping arcade has its own place in the city's history: Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermès opened their first stores in mainland China there in the 1990s. Downstairs, Jing is the French restaurant and bar, with one Michelin star in the MICHELIN Guide Beijing 2026, and The Lobby serves the Peninsula afternoon tea. The spa adds a physiotherapist who works with Traditional Chinese Medicine.

The Forbidden City is a short walk west. For a very different idea of a Beijing hotel, the former Aman beside the Summer Palace, now the Beijing Yihe Hotel, is a set of courtyards outside the imperial garden, and The PuXuan occupies Ole Scheeren's Guardian Art Center nearby.

Sources: The Peninsula Beijing; Business Class; Wikipedia; Michelin Guide.