Nanjing Off the Beaten Path: 5 Days
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Five days keeps everything from the 4-day plan and adds a day trip to Suzhou, putting Nanjing’s spot on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail line to good use. Shorter trip? The 4-day plan covers Days 1-4 below without leaving the city. Have a sixth day? The 6-day plan adds Yangzhou on top of this.
Book these before you go
- Reserve your free timed passport-ID slot for Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum via the official site or WeChat before you fly.
- Check hotel rates on Booking.com , especially near Golden Week (1-7 October 2026) or Labor Day (1-5 May 2026).
- Book Nanjing-Suzhou train tickets a few days ahead during peak season; the corridor runs frequently but fills up around holidays.
- Link Alipay or WeChat Pay to a foreign card and install a VPN before you land.
Currency is the yuan/renminbi (RMB, ¥), tipping isn’t expected, and a mid-range pace runs roughly RMB600-900 a day in Nanjing (Suzhou will add a bit more for the one day). Best months are October-November and March-May; avoid the July-August “Three Furnaces” heat.
Day 1
Base yourself near Xinjiekou or Fuzimiao.
Morning: the Confucius Temple (Fuzimiao) complex, Dacheng Hall ¥30, then the Jiangnan Examination Hall next door (¥50), where candidates once sat exams for days in cells reportedly just 1.33m wide. Now the Imperial Examination Museum, and the history most Fuzimiao visitors skip.
Midday: skip the snack stalls directly on the water at Fuzimiao; the same salted duck and duck-blood-and-vermicelli soup cost less at an ordinary diner a few streets back toward Xinjiekou.
Afternoon: Zhan Garden, a Ming-dynasty classical garden built by general Xu Da, now housing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom History Museum, covering the 1850-1864 civil war when rebel forces held Nanjing as their capital, renamed Tianjing, for over a decade.
Evening: the Qinhuai River at dusk. A night cruise runs about ¥80 for roughly 50 minutes from Panchi Wharf, or walk the riverside lanes for free.
Day 2
Morning: the Ming Palace ruins, the 14th-century imperial palace Zhu Yuanzhang built starting in 1367, whose layout directly modeled Beijing’s later Forbidden City. The Meridian Gate, Donghua Gate, and Xi’an Gate platforms survive as a free public park near Minggugong metro station.
Midday: lunch around Xinjiekou.
Afternoon: the Presidential Palace (¥40), China’s largest museum of modern history, where Sun Yat-sen took his 1911-12 inauguration oath. The gatehouse has been closed to entry since 10 December 2024; enter through the new west-side entrance.
Late afternoon: a stretch of the Ming City Wall. The Shence Gate to Taiping Gate section (Taicheng, ¥30) runs along Xuanwu Lake.
Evening: Xuanwu Lake’s free shoreline, or Bailuzhou Park (Egret Island), a free garden with 13 differently designed bridges.
Day 3
Morning: Purple Mountain. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (free, reservation required), the Ming Xiaoling Sacred Way (roughly 1,800m, 12 pairs of stone animals and officials), then Linggu Temple, where the Beamless Hall is built entirely from brick and stone arches with no timber. The combo ticket (¥100) covers all three. Ming Xiaoling is part of the joint “Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties” UNESCO listing, not a standalone World Heritage Site.
Afternoon: the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall , commemorating the estimated 300,000 civilians and unarmed soldiers killed after the city fell to Japanese forces on 13 December 1937. Entry is free, roughly 8:30am-4:30pm, closed Mondays; check the official site for the current reservation policy before you go. This is a memorial to mass death: keep photography quiet and don’t rush it.
Day 4
Morning: Niushou Mountain, south of downtown in Jiangning District, for the Foding (Usnisa) Palace, a modern temple built inside a disused mining pit (1937-1958). The underground shrine runs roughly 220m by 160m, topped by an 89.3m structure with a 52m gold dome. Since 27 October 2015 it has enshrined what’s described as the only surviving parietal (skull) relic of the Buddha. Confirm current hours and price before you go.
Afternoon: the Nanjing Yunjin Brocade Museum, covering the “cloud brocade” silk-weaving tradition that Qing-era Nanjing wove on thousands of looms, recognized on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
Evening: Nanjing 1912, a Republican-era-themed bar and restaurant district near the Presidential Palace, if you’re not templed out. Check what’s currently open before chasing a specific venue.
Day 5
Suzhou day trip. Suzhou sits on the same Shanghai-bound corridor as Nanjing, commonly cited at roughly 1-1.5 hours by high-speed rail from Nanjing South (exact minutes and fare worth confirming when you book). Suzhou’s draw is its UNESCO-listed classical gardens, a different flavor of history from anything in Nanjing itself: intricate private garden design rather than imperial tombs or city walls. Give yourself a full day and a morning departure to make the most of it; there’s no need to rush back to Nanjing for dinner.
Five days pairs a genuinely deep look at Nanjing with your first taste of the wider Jiangnan region the city sits in. If Yangzhou’s Slender West Lake or Zhenjiang’s riverside temples are next on your list, the 6-day and 7-day plans build them in.