structural:summarization, information:highlighting
Tourism

The city's streetscapes incorporate nineteenth and early twentieth-century European architecture, juxtaposed with the concrete and glass monoliths of contemporary China. Though areas of the city are being redeveloped, much of the colonial architecture has been placed under protection.

In the nineteenth century, the port city caught the attention of the seafaring Western powers, who used the boarding of a British ship by Chinese troops as an excuse to declare war. Using armed gunboats, they were victorious; the Treaty of Tianjin, signed in 1856, gave the Europeans the right to establish nine concessionary bases on the mainland, from which they could conduct trade and sell opium. These concessions, which were along the banks of the Hai River, were self-contained European communities; the French built châteaux and towers, while the Germans constructed red-tiled Bavarian villas. Tensions between the indigenous population and the foreigners were noticeable in the Tianjin Incident of 1870, which occurred when a Chinese mob attacked a French-run orphanage, and again during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, after which foreigners leveled the walls surrounding the old Chinese city to enable them to watch its residents.

The old city was razed entirely during 2000 and 2001 to make way for new developments. Only several old buildings, such as the Tianjin Temple of Confucius, remain.

The network of ex-concession streets south and west of the central train station and south of the Hai River now constitute the areas of most interest to visitors. The châteaux of the French concession now make up the downtown district just south of the river and mansions that the British built are east of the area. Farther east and south of the river, the architecture has a slight German construction.