Discover Beijing
Drum Tower and Bell Tower
钟楼鼓楼
The Yuan-dynasty timekeeping pair that once sounded the hours for the whole walled city, standing at the north end of the central axis. The Drum Tower holds a reconstructed set of 24 seasonal drums with live drumming performances, and from its gallery you look straight down a hutong roofscape.
The story
What makes this place special
These two towers stand on the old city's central axis north of the Forbidden City and were the city's clock: drums beaten in one and a great bronze bell struck in the other marked the night watches and the opening and closing of the city gates for the whole population. The Drum Tower was first built in 1272 under Kublai Khan, in the Yuan capital, and rebuilt in the Ming period - the Yongle-era rebuilding is usually dated to 1420. The Bell Tower stands a couple of hundred metres further north on the same axis. Reported heights (around 46-47m for the Drum Tower, around 33m for the Bell Tower) and the weight of the bell - variously given as anything from 42 to 63 tonnes - differ between sources and should be treated as approximate.
What you’ll discover
Two separate climbs with a short walk between them. In the Drum Tower you go up a very steep internal flight to a single large upper chamber holding a row of replica drums and one surviving original, plus a modern digital display explaining the old timekeeping system; a troupe gives short drumming performances through the day. In the Bell Tower you climb a similar steep stair to the bell hanging in its frame. The real reward is the view from the open galleries: the Drum Tower looks south over an unbroken sea of grey courtyard roofs towards the Forbidden City, and north straight at the Bell Tower. Between the two is a small square that functions as a neighbourhood living room.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Time your arrival to a drumming performance. They are short and run at set times through the day with a midday gap; outside them the upper chamber is a room with drums in it. Ask for the day's times at the ticket desk, as schedules change.
- The roof view south from the Drum Tower is the best place in Beijing to understand what the city was before the 1950s - a single-storey grid of courtyards. Nothing in the hutongs at ground level shows you that.
- Both towers have the same brutally steep, narrow, high-rise stone staircase - the Drum Tower's is around sixty-plus tall steps in a single flight with a rope handrail. Doing both means doing it twice.
- The square between the towers, and the lanes off it, are the real attraction: morning markets, old men with birds, and some of the better small restaurants and bars in the city on Fangzhuanchang and Doujiao hutongs.
- Walk south from the Drum Tower down Nanluoguxiang only if you want shops; walk west instead into the lanes towards Houhai for the quieter hutongs, or north-east into Baochao hutong.
- Buy the combined two-tower ticket at whichever you reach first - they are sold separately as well and the combined one is the cheaper route if you intend both.
When to come
Late afternoon, when the low sun rakes across the grey roof tiles south of the Drum Tower, and the drumming performances are still running. Clear winter days give the longest view; summer haze flattens it.
Getting around
Not possible for a wheelchair, and hard with a bad knee. The only way up either tower is one long, very steep, narrow stone staircase with high risers and no lift and no alternative route - the Drum Tower's flight is the steeper of the two. The square between the towers and the surrounding lanes are flat and fine at ground level, but the towers themselves should be ruled out if stairs are a problem; there is nothing to see at ground level inside them.
Worth knowing before you go
Time your visit to a drumming demonstration - they run on the hour or half-hour through the day and last only a few minutes. Both towers are reached by a single long, steep stone staircase with no lift, so skip it if stairs are a problem.
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