Taku Forts

The Taku Forts (大沽口炮台), also called the Peiho Forts, stand by the estuary of the Hai River in the Binhai New Area, sixty kilometres south-east of the urban centre. They were among the military defence works of the northern coast in the Ming and Qing and were the main battlefield of the three battles of the Taku forts. In the early and middle nineteenth century the Qing built large batteries at the Taku mouth and the Beitang estuary to guard the sea route to Beijing and Tianjin. Most of the forts were dismantled when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded during the Boxer Rebellion. The site entered the third batch of national key protected sites in 1988, and the fort on the southern bank opened to the public in June 1997.