The Temple of Heaven, which is located in the southeast of the Imperial Palace South of Beijing, was a place for emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties to worship God and pray foison in China. It is not only the biggest construction group around the world presently, but also is the most representative one among all China's sacrifice constructions. It enjoys a worldwide reputation.

The Temple of Heaven, first built in the 18th year of Yongle Period (1420), was repaired and rebuilt during Qianlong and Guangxu periods of the Qing Dynasty. It is the general name of the Yuanqiu Temple and Qigu Temple, with length of 1700 meters from east to west, width of 1600 meters from south to north, and area of about 2.70 million square meters. The Yuanqiu Temple, also called "Sacrifice Heaven (Jitian) Temple", was a place used to sacrifice Heaven by emperors in midwinter; the Qigu Temple, namely "Pray Year (Qinian) Palace", was a place to hold ceremonies to sacrifice Heaven.

The Temple of Heaven is divided by two walls into two parts, the Inner Temple and the Outer Temple, forming a shape like a Chinese word "(Hui)". Primary constructions are located in the Inner Temple, for instance, the Yuanqiu Temple in the south, and the Qigu Temple in the north. The Yuanqiu Temple and the Qigu Temple are divided by a wall and connected by the "Danbi Bridge", which is 360 meters in length, 28 meters in width and 2.5 meters in height, structuring the South-north axes of the Inner Temple. The south walls of the temple are quadrate and the north walls of the temple are round, symbolizing the round heaven and quadrate ground.

The primary design idea of the temple's constructions is to emphasize how wide and how high the heaven is, so as to reveal how sovereign the "Heaven" is. To the overall arrangement, the Inner Temple is located in the east to the south-east middle axes of the Outer Temple, while the Yuanqiu Temple and Qinian Temple are located in the east to the middle axes of the Inner Temple. This structure makes the west area wider and gives the people, who will get an open visual field as soon as they enter the Temple of Heaven from the west frontispiece, an impression that the heaven is so great and they themselves are so weak. When it comes to the single construction, the construction style of round shape assembled with sharp peak was adopted in the Qinian Palace and Huangqiongyu, and their external stage bases and eaves shrink upwards, making you fell they are close to the Heaven.

The Temple of Heaven is characterized by a unique artistic style. Additionally, since the knowledge of mechanics, acoustics and geometry principle is used in some constructions there, the temple is valuable in scientific research. For example, the echo wall and echo stone in Huangqiongyu were designed and constructed very wonderfully.

In November 1998, the Temple of Heaven was listed into the World Heritage List by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization). The World heritage committee appraised the temple as: "Built in the first half of the 15th century, the Temple of Heaven located in the royal garden is surrounded with ancient pines. The temple, a temple construction group preserved well, reveals the relationship between the Heaven and Ground in terms of whether overall arrangement or single construction. And this relationship possessed a key position in Chinese ancient university view. These constructions, at the same time, reveal the unique effects that emperors, ministers and generals performed in this relation."