Nanjing Off the Beaten Path: 6 Days

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Six days is the point where “Nanjing trip” honestly becomes “Nanjing as a base for Jiangnan,” using the city’s high-speed rail hub to reach Suzhou and Yangzhou on top of everything in town. Shorter trip? The 5-day plan covers Days 1-5 below without Yangzhou. Have a seventh day? The 7-day plan adds Zhenjiang on top of this.

Book these before you go

Currency is the yuan/renminbi (RMB, ¥), tipping isn’t expected, and a mid-range pace runs roughly RMB600-900 a day in Nanjing itself. 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.

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, 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. 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) along Xuanwu Lake.

Evening: Xuanwu Lake’s free shoreline, or Bailuzhou Park (Egret Island).

Day 3

Morning: Purple Mountain. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum (free, reservation required), the Ming Xiaoling Sacred Way, then Linggu Temple and its Beamless Hall. The combo ticket (¥100) covers all three. Ming Xiaoling is part of the joint “Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties” UNESCO listing.

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. Keep photography quiet and don’t rush it.

Day 4

Morning: Niushou Mountain’s Foding (Usnisa) Palace, a modern temple built inside a disused mining pit, enshrining what’s described as the only surviving parietal (skull) relic of the Buddha since 27 October 2015. Confirm current hours and price before you go.

Afternoon: the Nanjing Yunjin Brocade Museum, covering the “cloud brocade” silk-weaving tradition.

Evening: Nanjing 1912, a Republican-era-themed bar and restaurant district near the Presidential Palace.

Day 5

Suzhou day trip. Commonly cited at roughly 1-1.5 hours by high-speed rail from Nanjing South (confirm minutes and fare when you book). Suzhou’s UNESCO-listed classical gardens are a completely different flavor of history from Nanjing’s tombs and walls. Give it a full day.

Day 6

Yangzhou day trip, reached via the Nanjing-Qidong railway. Exact minutes weren’t directly confirmed in our research, but the line’s 2016 electrification cut the much longer Nanjing-Nantong run to roughly 1h50, so this shorter segment should run well under an hour; confirm the current schedule when you book. Yangzhou’s Slender West Lake (¥120), styled after Hangzhou’s famous West Lake, plus the classical gardens He Yuan and Ge Yuan and the 5th-century Daming Temple, rebuilt after Taiping-era damage, are the draws. Two stations serve the city, the older Yangzhou Railway Station and the newer Yangzhoudong (opened 2020), so double-check which one your train uses.

Six days lets you treat Nanjing as a genuine Jiangnan base rather than padding out a week of city-only content. If you’ve got a seventh day, the 7-day plan rounds it out with Zhenjiang, the closest and easiest of the three day trips.