Below is an article we wrote for The City Traveler, an online magazine written and edited by experienced travel journalists for readers who love exploring the world’s great urban places.

Beijing’s quiet hutong neighborhoods are about as close as you can come to experiencing what everyday life was like in the city more than 700 years ago.

Narrow lanes or alleys that traditionally consist of several squat buildings (homes, stores, public restrooms, etc), hutongs are built so closely together that they form a nearly continuous wall, broken only by doorways leading into a residential area or store.

Residences in the hutong are typically courtyard houses (siheyuan), which contain several buildings grouped around one or more open air courtyards. These courtyard homes, which traditionally housed several generations of a single family, functioned as a very private and personal mini “walled city”.

The remainder of this article can be viewed on The City Traveler’s website.