Six Senses Plans a Courtyard Retreat in Beijing’s Imperial Garden District

Six Senses has announced a hotel in Beijing. Six Senses Beijing will stand in Haidian district, in the north-west of the city, within the area known as the Three Hills and Five Gardens. It will have 75 rooms and suites. No opening date has been given.

The Three Hills and Five Gardens

The name refers to the landscape of hills, lakes and imperial gardens that the Qing emperors created to the north-west of the capital from the late 17th century. It includes the Summer Palace, the ruins of the Old Summer Palace, Fragrant Hills and Jade Spring Hill. Between the gardens lay villages and fields of rice, planted on imperial orders with a variety brought from the south and irrigated by the springs of the Western Hills. The rice of this district supplied the court.

The hotel site is at Liulangzhuang, one of these former villages, which the city has been redeveloping as part of a programme to restore the historic landscape. The project brings back rice paddies, waterways and lotus ponds on the land around the hotel.

The plan

The hotel is laid out on two sites linked by paths in the manner of hutong lanes. The buildings take the form of the siheyuan, the Beijing courtyard house, in a contemporary treatment. Accommodation ranges from rooms to suites of one to four bedrooms, and there is a two-storey residence for private events. Dining pavilions stand on the water, and a pier allows boats to move along the restored channels.

As in every Six Senses, the spa is central, with personal wellness programmes that combine diagnostics with traditional practice. The brand’s usual features are included: an Earth Lab for workshops on sustainable living and an Alchemy Bar where guests make their own scrubs and remedies from plants.

The owners are two Haidian district development companies. The architect has not been named.

Why it matters

This will be the second Six Senses in mainland China, after Six Senses Qing Cheng Mountain near Chengdu. It places a resort-style wellness hotel inside Beijing, where the nearest equivalent is Aman Summer Palace, a short distance away beside the east gate of the palace. Haidian is also the district of the city’s main universities and technology companies, which gives the hotel a local market as well as visitors.

The area is about 40 minutes from the centre by car and has its own metro connections. For the wider picture of wellness hotels in the region, see our guide to wellness retreats in Asia.