Grand Canal Gongshu Citywalk

Begin on the square east of the bridge rather than at the water, because here the canal turns south-east on its last stretch into the city and you want the whole line in front of you before walking into it. The square holds the 中国京杭大运河博物馆, China's first museum dedicated to the canal, in a fan-shaped building curving around the plaza: free, Tuesday to Sunday, shut Mondays, nobody admitted after 16:00. Two hundred metres on and you are at the bridge's east abutment, where a 3-yuan public boat ties up 129 m from the steps. Those closure days are the first thing to know about this walk.

The bridge is why the city built a district here. Begun in 1631, the fourth year of 崇祯, rebuilt in 1714, widened in 1726 under the provincial governor 李卫, and renewed in 1885 by the Hangzhou collector 丁丙, it is a three-span arch on thin piers, running from 丽水路 in the east to 桥弄街 in the west. For boatmen coming south with a load of rice it was the sight that meant the journey was over: 拱 as a clasped hand, 宸 as the imperial residence. Walk the deck, which steps up and down and is crowded at sunset, and stop midspan for the 运道 downstream, the 登云 bridge beyond it, and the barges that still pass at any hour.

Cross to the west side and you are on one of the six canal sites UNESCO listed in Hangzhou, the only historic street among them. 桥西 grew as a riverside market town in the late Qing, then filled with mills, and the block kept both layers: timber shopfronts, and national museums in converted sheds. The 杭州工艺美术博物馆 is a first-class national museum, and next door the 刀剪剑 museum is 张小泉 scissors over Han dynasty swords. The one to prefer is the 手工艺活态馆, in the 1896 通益公纱厂 shed: a mill of working benches where bamboo weaving and embroidery are made rather than displayed. Entry is free, the group shuts on Tuesdays, and no venue sits on the street you are walking.

South from 桥西 the path passes ground that used to be fenced off. 小河油库 was the first oil storage facility built in Zhejiang after 1949, raised in the early 1950s to take diesel and lubricants by barge for a province with no refinery. It closed in 2019 and reopened on 1 October 2022 as 小河公园, redesigned by Kengo Kuma's office, which kept four warehouses and three tanks. The tanks are punched with several thousand holes: daylight falls into them in speckles, and at night they throw light out like lanterns. One holds a livehouse, one a bookshop that never goes dark. That fence was one of four breakpoints in the canal greenway, and the 2022 works cleared it.

A left turn off the 运道 costs 400 m and buys the best quarter hour on the line. 小河直街 is a historic street, not a listed component, and every guide to this district blurs the two. What you have is late-Qing canal housing packed along the bank of the 小河, the tributary, which the district calls the last canal households. The detour pays in two things: the old soy-sauce yard, and the point where the 小河 meets the canal, the only place on the walk where you can see the difference in scale between a river that carried a city and one that carried a neighbourhood.

The line changes banks at 大关桥, downstream of 青莎公园, and it does so on a road with a pavement, because that is how the canal is crossed here. The footbridges around 小河 and 小河直街, 惠贞桥, 勤俭桥, 康家桥, carry lanes over the tributary; the next crossings of the main water are 登云大桥 upstream and 江涨桥 below the granary. Know that before hunting for a prettier route. Walk out of 小河直街 on to 湖墅北路, drop back to the water through 青莎公园, and take the bridge. From the deck you get what neither half gives alone: the long warehouse frontage of 大兜路, the temple roof behind it, and barges coming up the bend. Below the bridge the towpath is straight, hard-surfaced, lit at night and used as a running route.

大兜路 runs along the east bank between 大关桥 and 江涨桥, 1,100 m long, under the same name since a Ming register wrote it down. Its reason was the water: Hangzhou's north-city grain, fish and fruit markets sat around these bridges in the Song, and the Qing added granaries. It is now the district's restaurant street, named to a national leisure-district batch in 2023. By 18:00 the lanterns are on, including a wall spelling 兜走好运. Behind the south end, 香积寺 takes 20 yuan and hands you three incense sticks. Founded in the Song and rebuilt in 2009, its oddity is its deity: the principal hall serves 大圣紧那罗王, the kitchen god, which is why cooks come here and why a midday visit has a purpose. Only the west pagoda is old, a Kangxi-era stone tower under provincial protection.

The last leg passes 江涨桥 to 富义仓 at 霞湾巷8号, where the canal meets its tributary the 胜利河. This is the third listed site, and the least scenic-looking, which is its interest. Built in 1880 to hold tribute rice for the region, it covers about 8,000 square metres, and its thirteen brick-and-timber storehouses stand in four ranks and three tiers with courtyards and a landing. The old saying paired it with Beijing's 南新仓, the north granary and the south one. It is the city's only surviving grain-store complex, listed for national protection in 2013 and inscribed a year later. It now holds exhibitions and a charity culture park. Walk out to 香积寺 station, 677 m, or down to the 信义坊 wharf, 620 m.