Classical Gardens of Suzhou

Suzhou was founded in the 6th century BCE as the capital of the Kingdom of Wu. Private gardens appeared from around the 4th century and reached their height in the 18th. Most were made by scholars and officials, who set pavilions and pagodas among rocks, hills and water modelled on nature, taking Chinese landscape painting as their guide.

The oldest, the Canglang Pavilion, was laid out in the early 11th century on the site of an earlier garden. The Master of the Nets Garden was first built in 1140 by Shi Zhengzhi, an official of the Southern Song, and around 1785 the retired official Song Zongyuan remade it and named it after the simple life of a fisherman. The Humble Administrator's Garden was begun in 1513 by the Ming official and poet Wang Xianchen on the site of a burned temple and finished in 1526; in 1533 the painter Wen Zhengming recorded it in 31 paintings and poems.

Suzhou's gardens became models for Chinese garden design and were copied even in imperial gardens such as the Chengde Mountain Resort. They were inscribed in 1997 and the site was enlarged in 2000 to its present nine gardens.