Zhanyuan Garden (瞻园) is the oldest preserved garden in Nanjing, dating from the Ming dynasty and expanded by Qing-era owners. The garden is built around a central pool with Taihu limestone rockeries — the dramatically perforated stones brought from Taihu Lake in Jiangsu — arranged on the banks. The rockeries are unusually large and well-preserved examples of the classical literati garden tradition.
The garden served as the headquarters of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom administration during the 1850s and 1860s, and a small museum on the premises covers the Taiping period in Nanjing. The Fuzimiao district is adjacent, making Zhanyuan an easy addition to a Qinhuai River afternoon. The combination of classical garden design and turbulent revolutionary history in the same space is typically Nanjing.