A mountain resort is a place to holiday or vacation located in a mountainous area. The term includes ski resorts, where winter sports, including skiing, snowboarding, ice climbing and ice skating are practiced, as well as places where summer activities such as mountain biking, mountain boarding, and hiking are pursued. In hot climates hill and mountain resorts are visited for the cooler temperatures at higher elevations.

North America

In the United States and Canada the term "mountain resort" usually denotes a resort visited all year, both for winter sports and for summer activities, such as hiking, mountain biking, golf, and tennis.

India

In British India the colonial rulers developed resorts in the Himalayas and in mountainous areas of South India known as "hill stations", where they could escape the summer heat of the plains.

The Mountain Resort in Chengde (Chinese: 避暑山庄; pinyin: Bìshǔ Shānzhuāng; literally: "Mountain Villa for Avoiding the Heat"; Manchu: Halhūn be jailara gurung) or Ligong (Chinese: 离宫; pinyin: Lígōng), is a large complex of imperial palaces and gardens situated in the city of Chengde in Hebei, China. Because of its vast and rich collection of Chinese landscapes and architecture, the Mountain Resort in many ways is a culmination of all the variety of gardens, pagodas, temples and palaces from various regions of China.

History

Built between 1703 and 1792 during the Qing dynasty, the Mountain Resort took 89 years to complete. It covers a total area of 5.6 square kilometres (2.2 sq mi), almost half of Chengde's urban area. It is a vast complex of palaces and administrative and ceremonial buildings. Temples of various architectural styles and imperial gardens blend harmoniously into a landscape of lakes, pastureland and forests.

The Kangxi, Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors often spent several months a year here to escape the summer heat in the capital city of Beijing and the palace zone in the southern part of the resort was therefore designed to resemble the Forbidden City in Beijing. It consists of two parts: a court in front, where the emperor received high officials, nobles of various minority nationalities, and foreign envoys; and bed chambers in the rear, which were the imperial family's living quarters. The Jiaqing and Xianfeng emperors both died while staying at Chengde in 1820 and 1861 respectively.