The Barbican at Bussiere Garden

Posted: April 30th, 2026 | No Comments »

One last post of Bussiere Garden – to see all the other just put “Bussiere” in the blog search engine….

The Bussiere Garden complex in Beijing’s Western Hills is a combination of Chinese and Western elements in three parts: the barbican tower, and then the northern wing and the southern wing villas (for Bussiere and his wife and the other for their tubercular daughter who needed the cleaner air of the Western Hills).

The barbican (a fortified outpost, tower, or gated structure built to protect a property) is perhaps the strangest part of the property’s architectural mix. A western style castle of stone and granite with three floors and facing toward the east. Quite what Dr Bussiere used the barbican for is not clear – presumably for views across the valley to Haidian and the nearby valleys of the Western Hills. It is not needed for defence or was ever used as accommodation and appears to have been purely an architectural folly on Bussiere’s land. 

Here it is under construction c.1923 when it seems to have been the first stricture to be tackled, shortly after completion of the tower and main villa and then today….

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