Beijing
You can be here in October for about €999, 4 days, 1 stop.
Why now
Prime time in October: 19°C days, fares below average.
Autumn is the clear-air window; spring brings dust, summer brings heat and afternoon storms, and the weeks around national holidays fill the palace and the Wall with domestic tour groups. The Forbidden City sells out days ahead and closes on Mondays, so book it before anything else.
Best months here: April, May, September. October is not one of them — the label above measures the month against a fixed bar, not against the rest of the year here. Daytime highs, sea temperature and rainy days from three years of Open-Meteo reanalysis; a rainy day is one with at least 1 mm of rain, which is the WMO threshold and not the same as "it drizzled".
The place
Beijing is a capital built to a scale that ignores pedestrians: ring roads, ministry compounds and the long north-south axis of the Forbidden City, with hutong lanes surviving in pockets between them. It suits people who like history laid out in grids and are prepared to walk a long way between the things on the map.
What you can do
- 01Walk the Forbidden City south to north, then climb Jingshan opposite the exit for the view back over the roofs.
- 02Take the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall on a weekday morning; the cable car saves the climb.
- 03Eat Peking duck at Siji Minfu or Da Dong, carved at the table and eaten with the pancakes and bone soup.
- 04Cycle the hutongs around Houhai and the Drum and Bell Towers early, before the rickshaw touts start work.
- 05Spend an afternoon at the Temple of Heaven, where retirees play cards and practise tai chi under the cypresses.
Where to stay · neighbourhoods
Stay in a courtyard hotel in the Dongcheng hutongs for a first visit, or near Wangfujing if you want a lift and a metro stop; anywhere outside the Third Ring Road adds an hour a day in traffic.
Unusual things
- ◦The Ancient Observatory at Jianguomen, a Ming brick platform with Jesuit-era bronze instruments above the Second Ring Road traffic.
- ◦798 Art District in Dashanzi, a 1950s East German-designed factory complex turned galleries, with the slogans still on the walls.
- ◦The Lama Temple's Maitreya, a 26-metre Buddha carved from a single sandalwood trunk, at the end of Yonghegong's incense-filled halls.
Day trips
Flight options
Routes come from OpenFlights (historical) and a 2026 route reference compiled from public timetables. Durations are the published schedule where we have it, otherwise a block-time model fitted on measured nonstop flights. Verify schedules with the airline before booking.
Flight.Deals has not measured this route from Florence yet, but it does measure Beijing from Rome (€630 typical) and Milan (€591 typical).
Entry requirements · IT passport
China: 30-day visa-free trial for many European passports (check validity dates).
Source: passport-index-data, March 2026 (coarse indicator), covering 258 of our 268 destinations for each of 199 passports. Always confirm with the destination's official site.
Airports
Distances are centre to airport derived · nonstop counts are our route reference for 2026, not every flight that exists.
Local transport
- Airport to city
- Airport Express, 25 min, ~€3
- Car needed?
- No — walkable or good public transport
- Getting around
- The metro is extensive, cheap and signed in English, with airport express lines from both Capital and Daxing; taxis are metered but drivers rarely read English, so carry addresses in Chinese. Set up Alipay or WeChat Pay with a foreign card before arriving, since cash and foreign cards are rarely accepted.
- Clock
- 6 hours ahead of Florence (Asia/Shanghai) derived
- Daylight
- 11.2 hours of daylight in October · sunrise 06:23, sunset 17:37 derived
- Currency
- CNY
Good to know
Entry and visa-free transit rules change often, so confirm them for your passport before booking; expect passport checks at Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City, and poor air quality on some winter days.
Alternatives at a similar price
Whole trip per person for 4 days from Florence in October, then the flight time; estimates, like the total above.
Ibiza
Olbia
Santorini
Mykonos
Nice
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