The Old Summer Palace
The Garden of Perfect Brightness, dark since 1860.
- EXISTED
- 1707 – 1860
- WHERE
- Beijing, China
- LOST
- 18–21 October 1860
- CAUSE OF LOSS
- Looted and burned by British and French troops
Northwest of Beijing, the Qing emperors spent a century and a half building Yuanmingyuan, the Garden of Perfect Brightness, eight hundred acres of lakes, hills, pavilions, libraries and European-style marble palaces, holding perhaps the finest collection of art and treasure ever assembled in China. Visiting Jesuits called it the garden of gardens; there was nothing like it anywhere in the world.
In October 1860, at the close of the Second Opium War, British and French troops looted the palace and then, on the order of Lord Elgin, as punishment for the torture and killing of envoys, burned it. Thousands of men set fires that took three days to consume what could not be carried away. China has left the ruins unrestored: a wound kept deliberately open.
Set alight on 18 October 1860; the fires burned for three days. A few marble arches of the European palaces still stand in the grass, kept as ruins on purpose.