Located off the Chang'an (Eternal Peace) Avenue near the Beijing Railway Station, the Ancient Beijing Observatory was first built in 1442 during the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644). It is one of the oldest observatories in the world. The observatory was renovated in the early 1980s and reopened to the public in April 1983. After renovation it is very much as it was when it served the imperial court.
In 1227, when the Northern Song Dynasty (960 - 1127) was overthrown, the astronomical instruments in the capital at Bianliang (today's Kaifeng, Henan Province) were moved to Beijing (then called Zhongdu, meaning Central Capital) by the Jin rulers and installed in the Jin Chief Astronomer's Observatory. When the Yuan Dynasty (1279 - 1368) succeeded the Jin Dynasty (1115 - 1234) and established its capital in Beijing, it built a new observatory just north of the site of the present-day structure in 1279. The instruments designed by Wang Xun and Guo Shoujin and built by Nepalese craftsman Arniko served virtually unchanged as the basis of astronomical work for the last 500 years.
In 1368 when the first Ming Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang moved the capital to Nanjing, these astronomical instruments were brought to the city. Yongle, the third Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, took power in 1403 and moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1420. He did not dare to move these instruments because the tomb of the first Ming Emperor was in Nanjing. Instead he sent some artisans to the city in 1437 to make wooden copies of the Song armillary sphere and the Yuan guibiao (a type of sundial) and abridged armilla (a symplified form of the armillary sphere). A new set of bronze instruments was then cast in Beijing modelled after these wooden copies.
At the same time, a new observatory was constructed on the site of the water tower to the southeast of the old capital. It was during that period that the Ancient Beijing Observatory took on its present scale and layout and was equipped with such traditional instruments as the armillary sphere, the abridged armilla , and the celestial globe on the observatory platform, as well as the guibiao and the water clock below the platform.