North China Heritage Timeline Five regions, fourteen properties, three ways to read them.
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North China Heritage Timeline

The 14 World Heritage properties of Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia, readable three ways: by inscription year, by province, or by type.

North China holds 14 of China’s 61 World Heritage properties across five provincial-level regions — Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia. Beijing alone accounts for seven listings, but that number says more about serial properties than about the city. Switch the view below: by year to see the order of inscription, by province to see what each region holds, by type to see how lopsided the cultural-natural split is.

Three properties that cross provincial lines

The Great Wall — five regions, one propertyBadaling and Mutianyu in Beijing, Huangyaguan in Tianjin, Shanhaiguan and Jinshanling in Hebei, Yanmen Pass in Shanxi, and the Jin-era border wall in Inner Mongolia are sections of one inscription, not separate sites.
The Grand Canal — the northern endTonghui River in Beijing, the North Canal through Tianjin and the South Canal in Hebei are the section that carried grain to the capital. The canal is inscribed as a whole, so the north cannot be visited as a separate property.
Imperial Tombs — Hebei holds two of themThe Eastern Qing Tombs in Zunhua and the Western Qing Tombs in Yi County are in Hebei, while the Ming tombs sit in Beijing. All of them count under one inscription.

Read by construction date, not listing date

The year on the left of each card is when the property entered the list. The periods below are when it was actually built — the two are usually centuries apart.

5th century — Northern WeiYungang Caves were cut by the Northern Wei court in the 5th century, and entered the list in 2001.
13th–14th century — YuanXanadu was the Yuan summer capital in the 13th century; it entered the list in 2012, seven centuries later.
14th–20th century — Ming and QingThe Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Pingyao, Chengde, the Qing tombs and most of the standing Great Wall belong to this span, yet their listing years range from 1987 to 2024.
Geological time — Badain JaranThe dunes and lakes of Badain Jaran were formed over tens of thousands of years and entered the list in 2024. Natural heritage has no construction date at all.

How to use this page

A property listed under two provinces is still one property. That is why the five regions add up to more than 14 entries: the Great Wall counts for all five, the Grand Canal for three.

Beijing’s seven entries include the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, Zhoukoudian, the Summer Palace, the Temple of Heaven, the Grand Canal and the Central Axis. Six of the seven are cultural.

This page does not rank provinces or recommend routes. It answers two questions: when did each property enter the list, and what does each region actually hold.

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