Beijing Yihe Hotel

The hotel lies just outside the East Palace Gate of the Summer Palace, separated from the imperial garden by a single wall. It is made of courtyard houses, some more than a century old, which Chinese accounts describe as the place where visitors once waited for an audience with the Empress Dowager Cixi, who made the Summer Palace her residence in the last decades of the Qing dynasty.

Aman opened them as a hotel in September 2008, its first in China. The opening was meant to coincide with the Beijing Olympics and came late, after objections that spring to a luxury resort inside a national treasure; the authorities and Aman replied that the plan fitted the imperial garden. Jaya Ibrahim, the Indonesian designer, did the interiors: floors of Beijing's golden clay tiles, roofs left open to their beams and columns, Ming-style furniture, carved screens and bamboo blinds. There are 51 rooms and suites around nine courtyards, the largest of them spread across three pavilions, and beneath the courtyards a basement holds a 25-metre pool, squash courts and a cinema.

The partnership lasted seventeen years. The owner, the Beijing Yiheyuan Hotel Company, ended its agreement with Aman on 29 December 2025, and the next day the hotel became 北京颐和宾馆, the Beijing Yihe Hotel, run by the owner itself. It announced that its service team would stay, that the buildings would be upgraded and that it would add Chinese-style rooms, traditional crafts and programmes on Beijing culture. OKYTO's Beijing guide sets it against the hotels of the city centre. Under Aman, staff would unlock a small door in the wall beside one of the courtyards and let guests into the Summer Palace, until about seven in the evening.

Sources: Jiemian; Jing Daily; China Daily; Beijing Business Today; Travelmole; Robb Report Malaysia; US Credit Card Guide