Cities for every pace.

The capital is vast, formal and surprisingly gentle once you step off the ring roads. Give it four days: one for the palaces, one for the Wall, two for wandering.

Pingyao is the best-preserved walled town in China, a grid of grey courtyards inside a six-kilometre wall. Sleep inside the walls and the evenings are yours.

Datong was a Northern Wei capital in the fifth century, and the caves they carved at Yungang are the earliest great Buddhist art in China. Add two Liao-dynasty monasteries in the old town and the Hanging Temple an hour away.

Linfen spans the Fen River basin and Yellow River edge, linking early-state archaeology, major Buddhist architecture, migration memory and Hukou Waterfall. Sites lie across a large prefecture rather than one downtown circuit. Base plans on geography and conservation access, not on squeezing every landmark into a day.