Chongqing is the most vertical city I know. Buildings start on the fifth floor because the ground floor is a cliff face, roads pass over rooftops, and the skyline stacks itself between the Yangtze and Jialing rivers like a cutaway diagram. You will want viewpoints, and you have choices ranging from free park terraces to glass-floored observation decks. Here is what is actually worth your time, based on several trips and one very rainy evening I do not want to repeat.

Eling Park: the classic, and nearly free

Eling Park sits on a ridge on the Yuzhong peninsula, between the two rivers, and its Liangjiang Pavilion terrace looks out on both waterways at once. The park itself is free or costs a token fee, and the pavilion terrace charges a few yuan. Sunset into nightfall is the slot to book in your head: the city lights come on in layers, the river traffic keeps moving, and Hongya Cave lights up down the hill like a stage set. There are tea spots in the park, and big old banyan trees for shade if you come in the afternoon instead.

Two tips. First, the terrace is small and fills up before sunset on weekends, so arrive 45 minutes early or accept that your photos will have strangers in them. Second, the viewpoint faces are fixed: one side for the Yangtze, one for the Jialing, and dusk flatters the Jialing side more, with Hongya Cave in frame.

Testbed 2 and the walk between

A fifteen-minute walk downhill from Eling Park takes you through Testbed 2, a former printing factory converted into galleries, studios and rooftop cafes, some with their own skyline angles. The rooftop spots here cost you the price of a coffee instead of a ticket, and the crowd skews younger and quieter than at the big viewpoints. I like it for the hour before sunset, then walking up to Eling for the main event.

The paid options, honestly rated

• Yikeshu (One Tree) viewpoint, across the river on Nanshan: the classic postcard angle over the whole peninsula. Around 30 yuan, best at night, and the drive up takes 30 to 40 minutes from the center. Worth it once, on a clear night.
• Raffles City Exploration Deck, the crystal skybridge 250 meters up linking four towers: around 100 to 150 yuan, glass floor, extremely modern. Go for the vertigo, stay for the view straight down onto Chaotianmen where the rivers meet.
• Hongya Cave itself: free to walk, and the famous photo is taken from the bridge or river level, not from inside. It is beautiful and absolutely packed; go late, after 10pm, if you want room to stand.

One more free option deserves a mention. The area around Qiansimen Bridge and the Jiangbeizui riverside walk gives you Hongya Cave from across the water, the angle in half the photos you have already seen, and it costs nothing but a metro ride. Photographers gather on the bridge railings about an hour after dark, and the composition works precisely because it is the one spot where the cave, the bridge and the skyline stack into a single frame.

When the view is worth it

Chongqing's fog is real. The city earned the nickname Fog Capital, and a gray day can hide everything above the twentieth floor. Check the evening forecast for clear or partly clear conditions before committing your one perfect evening to a viewpoint; if it is opaque, move the plan to the next night and do a hotpot dinner instead, which is also a defensible use of an evening here.

My ideal sequence, tested twice: late afternoon coffee at Testbed 2, walk up through the old streets to Eling Park an hour before sunset, watch the switch-on, then taxi down to a riverside spot for late dinner. It is a big skyline. Give it the two hours it deserves, and do not try to cram it between two other stops, because this is the image of the city you will keep.

Originally published on 71Asia Tours blog.