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Old Summer Palace is in the neighbourhood of Summer Palace and Xiangshan Park. So we were able to visit all three parks in one day. The Old Summer Palace was destroyed in 1860 by the French-British force. The ruins are now re-built into a park. We thought that there won’t be much to see, but we were wrong. We ended up spent almost three hours here, as it is three times as big as the current Summer Palace. It is composed of three major gardens – Yuanmingyuan, Changchunyuan and Qichunyuan. If you are interested in modern Chinese history, this is a must-visit site. It is a live proof of how war destroyed China and a completely magnificent imperial garden. Nevertheless, the re-built ruined garden is still very beautiful and with some left over original heritages. Here is one, the arc bridge, one among the rarely not-badly destroyed heritages at Qichunyuan - A very scenic spot where a lot of the locals come here to do their live drawings.