The Sum­mer Palace in Bei­jing &ndash, first built in 1750, large­ly destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored on its orig­i­nal foun­da­tions in 1886 &ndash is a mas­ter­piece of Chi­nese land­scape gar­den design. The nat­ur­al land­scape of hills and open water is com­bined with arti­fi­cial fea­tures such as pavil­ions, halls, palaces, tem­ples and bridges to form a har­mo­nious ensem­ble of out­stand­ing aes­thet­ic val­ue.