Confucian Temple and Imperial College Museum

The Confucian Temple and Imperial College Museum in Beijing preserves the Confucian Temple and the Imperial College, offering insights into China’s educational and cultural history.

Planning your visit

These two adjacent compounds ran imperial China's examination system, and understanding them explains a great deal about how the empire worked. The Confucian Temple, founded in 1302, holds 198 stone tablets inscribed with the names of over 51,000 men who passed the highest civil service examination across some six centuries — a physical record of the meritocratic ideal that, however imperfectly applied, selected the bureaucracy. Ancient cypresses fill the courtyards.

Next door, the Guozijian was the Imperial College, the highest educational institution in the country, where emperors periodically lectured from a hall set on an island in a circular moat. The Qianlong Stone Scriptures — 189 stelae carrying the complete Confucian classics, carved over twelve years — stand in a corridor beside it.

The area, Guozijian Street, retains its old gateways and is one of the more atmospheric surviving hutong stretches in Beijing.

The Lama Temple, Beijing's principal Tibetan Buddhist monastery, is a few minutes' walk away, and bookable options generally combine all three, which makes a coherent morning covering Confucian, Buddhist and imperial institutions together. Current availability is listed below.