Located in the southern part of Beijing, the Temple of Heaven used to house ceremonies of emperors of worshipping heaven and praying for harvest in the Ming and Qing dynasties. This typical altar temple, more important than other three major temples, i.e. Altar to the Earth, Altar to the Sun and Altar to the Moon, remains to be the largest existing ancient sacrificial structures across the world.

The construction of the temple started in 1407, and the project completed 14 years later. Surrounded by two rings walls, it covers an area totaling 273 hectares, four times the size of Forbidden City. With the wall from north to south stretching as long as 1,657 meters and that from east to west 1,703 meters, the outer wall is 6,553 meters in circumference while the inner wall measures 4,152 meters in perimeter.

The Temple of Heaven used to be a place where emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties went twice (and sometimes three times) a year to do worshipping and offering sacrifices to heaven to pray for good harvests and fine rain. In the past, sacrifices were offered to heaven and earth in one place only. But when the Temple of Earth was built in the north of the city in 1530, the Temple of Heaven was ever since used specially for offering sacrifices to heaven alone.

The temple is mainly divided into three sections, namely the Circular Mound Altar, the Imperial Vault of heaven and the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, plus some affiliated buildings like Dressing Platform, Long Corridor and Echo Wall.

The Circular Mound Altar was first built in 1530, and later was rebuilt in 1749. In ancient China, the altar was in a way a place even more important than the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests. Every year on the day of the Winter Solstice, the emperor would come to offer sacrifices to heaven on the altar. For this reason the altar was built into a circular one. Built in the open air and with no shelter over it, the sacrificial ceremony was being held right under heaven hence it was called "Luji", or the "open air offering of sacrifices".

As a main building in the south of the Temple of Heaven, the Imperial Vault of Heaven was built in 1530. At the very beginning it was called "Taishendian" or the Hall for Pacifying Gods and later changed into the present name. The building, used to have double eaves, was rebuilt into one of a single eave in 1752. The circular hall, standing 19.5 meters high and of 15.6 meters in diameter, used to be an octagonal one in the past. Consecrated on the central stone-platform in the Hall of Imperial Vault of Heaven is the tablet of the Jade Emperor, the four stone platforms on both sides used to be for the tablets of the emperor's ancestors of eight generations in succession.

   
 
Built on a three-tired platform, the hall of Prayer for Good Harvest, being of 32.72 meters in diameter, towers 38 meters high with its eaves fanning out on three tiers, of which the upper one has a gold-plated knob on it. Such a heavy building was supported merely on 28 wooden pillars with no single piece of reinforced concrete at all, and without using a single nail the whole building was brought together by mortise and tenon joints. The four pillars in the center of the hall, with each pillar standing 19.2 meters high and to be embraced by two and half persons joining hands together, are called "Longjingzhu"--the Dragon Well Pillar. They signify the four seasons of a year. The 12 pillars on the outside symbolize 12 months in a year and another 12 pillars standing in the round wall suggest the 12 two-hour periods of a day. And putting the two 12 pillars together you get 24, they represent the 24 solar terms of a year, and again adding the four in the center of the hall you get 28, that correspond to 28 lunar mansions in the heaven above.

The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests has undergone several times of the changes since it was first built in 1420. At that time the hall was named "Dasidian"--the Hall of Grand Sacrifices and it was rectangular in shape. However, in 1529, it was rebuilt into a round one with a roof of three tiers and its name changed into "Daxiangdian"--the Hall f Grand Treatment to Heaven. The roofs of three tiers were decorated in three different colors with the upper tier in blue, the middle one in yellow and the lower one in green. Later, in 1752, they were all changed into glazed tiles of dark blue. However, lightning destroyed them in 1889, and it was restored in accordance with the original in 1890. In 2006, the whole building underwent a thorough renovation with all its paintings redone in the same style as they done last time.

Nowadays the Temple of Heaven is a popular tourist attractions as well as an entertainment center for local people. If you get up early in the morning, you will see many local people practicing Taiji, playing cards and Chinese chess and singing folk songs there. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests has become the symbol of Beijing.