{"id":307,"date":"2020-03-10T19:09:02","date_gmt":"2020-03-10T09:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldheritagejourney.com\/?p=307"},"modified":"2023-12-20T07:00:09","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T21:00:09","slug":"best-world-heritage-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldheritagejourney.com\/best-world-heritage-gardens\/","title":{"rendered":"The 7 Best UNESCO World Heritage Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UNESCO World Heritage List contains many gardens. Are you wondering which are the best UNESCO gardens? These are our favourite UNESCO World Heritage gardens: an interesting mix of Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Botanical.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"WorldHeritageGardens\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Classical Gardens of Suzhou – World Heritage Site, China<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"Classical
The Lingering Garden, Suzhou<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This World Heritage site covers a series of nine Chinese gardens, located in the city of Suzhou, eastern China. Generally considered to be the pinnacle of classical Chinese garden design, some of them date back over a thousand years! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our first visit was the Humble Administrator’s Garden. It was founded in 1513 by Wang Xiancheng, a former Imperial official and poet who built the garden to show off his good taste and skills at garden-building. It was named after a verse by a famous Jin Dynasty poet, who wrote: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I enjoy a carefree life by planting trees and building my own house<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I irrigate my garden and grow vegetables for me to eat<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such a life suits a retired official like me well. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the way of ruling for an unsuccessful politician.<\/em><\/p>\nPan Yue, An Idle Life<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n


The garden took 16 years to complete, and quickly became famous in China thanks to local poets and artists painting and writing about it. It features pavilions, towers and bridges, all carefully laid out among pools, lakes, rivers and islands. It’s a beautiful and magical place, even on a rainy autumn day and filled with tourists. There’s still a few quiet areas where you can relax and take in the scenery, usually with atmospheric and inspiring names like Celestial Spring Tower or Distant Fragrance Hall, Flying Rainbow Bridge and Lotus Breeze Pavilion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also visited the Lingering Garden, located in western Suzhou. Dating back to 1593, it was commissioned by Xu Taishi, another former imperial official. Although smaller than the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the Lingering Garden gives you a really clear sense of how Chinese gardens are designed. Unlike classical western gardens which are highly formalised, Chinese gardens are carefully designed around a series of scenes. At the Lingering Garden, each new area is based on a real place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best example of this is a rockery garden, built to resemble nearby Tiantai Mountain<\/a>. With some better weather and fewer crowds, we loved the Lingering Garden. Even the building interiors were exquisitely done. Following our visits we had a really strong sense of how Suzhou had influenced other Chinese garden designers, including the builders of the Summer Palace in Beijing<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n