Hangzhou was capital of the Wuyue Kingdom from 907 and of the Southern Song from 1138, when a million residents made it the largest city on earth. Three days trace that arc: rock-cut Buddhas, excavated palace floors, merchant houses and canal wharves.
Founded in 328 CE by the Indian monk Huili, Lingyin was destroyed and rebuilt fourteen times. The Great Hall holds a 24.8m camphor-wood Sakyamuni; the two stone pagodas flanking it were carved in 960 CE. Open 07:00–18:00.
The limestone crag facing the temple carries 345 surviving carvings cut between 951 and 1292 — the largest body of Song and Yuan rock sculpture in southern China. The plump laughing Budai of 1128 sits at the mouth of the Qinglin cave path.
Opened in 2022 over the excavated retirement palace of Emperor Gaozong, begun 1162. Glass walkways cross the genuine Southern Song floor levels, drains and column bases, and the reconstructed Chonghua Hall is painted in period vermilion. Closed Mondays.
The needle-thin brick pagoda on Precious Stone Hill was first raised in 968 CE to pray for the safe return of Qian Hongchu, last king of Wuyue, from the Song court. The present seven-storey shaft is a faithful 1933 rebuild on the original base.
The Song general was executed on fabricated charges in 1142 and reburied here in 1163 once cleared. Four kneeling iron figures of his accusers, including chancellor Qin Hui, face the grass tomb mound — spat on by visitors for eight centuries.
Founded on the slope of Gushan island in 1904 by four seal carvers, China's oldest surviving scholarly society still keeps its stone-inscription galleries, Han-dynasty stele collection and the 1912 spring pavilion cut into the hillside rock.
The 1929 campus occupies the site of Qianlong's lakeside travelling palace. Beside it stands Wenlan Pavilion, one of seven imperial repositories of the Siku Quanshu, half burnt in 1861 and recopied by hand between 1880 and 1923.
The lakeshore road north of Broken Bridge is lined with 1920s–30s mansions built by Shanghai bankers, warlords and missionaries — Jingyu Fang, the Shanghai Commercial Bank villa and Doulu Villa, where Chiang Kai-shek stayed in 1937.
The Qing merchant-banker spent 300,000 taels of silver on this 1872 compound and was bankrupt eleven years later. Twelve courtyards, the rosewood-panelled Zhiyuan hall and an artificial limestone cave garden survive. Open 08:00–17:00.
Hu Xueyan's 1874 pharmacy still trades from its original hall of gilt-lacquer counters. His famous 'no cheating' plaque hangs facing inward towards the staff, and the rear courtyards display grinding boats, pill moulds and copper stills.
The three-arch stone bridge of 1631 marks the southern terminus of the 1,794km Grand Canal from Beijing. The lanes behind it housed dockers and the 1889 Tongyi silk filature, now the free Arts and Crafts, Fan and Umbrella museums.
A canal porters' and boatmen's quarter of two-storey Qing and Republican wooden shophouses, restored in 2007 with original shop-front boards and stone mooring rings still set into the embankment at the Yuhang tributary junction.