A free audio guide app
China’s sights, in your language.
LoreTrek is a free iOS app that tells the stories of the major halls along the Forbidden City’s central axis — in natural English, the moment you walk up. Source-cited, bilingual, audio fully offline.
Free · No account · Audio works offline
You can see it. You just can’t read it.
The Forbidden City has almost no English signage, Google is blocked inside China, a private guide runs $30–80, and the official ¥40 audio device is famously easy to miss your stop on. So most visitors walk past six centuries of history with no idea what they’re looking at.
How LoreTrek works
Download before you go
Grab it on hotel Wi-Fi. Every narration works offline inside the walls — no VPN, no Chinese SIM.
Walk in
Geofenced audio knows where you are. Reach a hall, and its story begins on its own.
Explore at your pace
Pause, skip, replay. Switch between English and 中文 anytime. No group, no schedule.
History you can actually trust
AI-written, verified line by line
Narrations are drafted from real sources, then checked against them sentence by sentence — not just generated and hoped for.
Sources cited
Guide pages list the references behind them. No made-up palace legends.
A natural voice
One narrator per language, state-of-the-art speech synthesis that doesn’t sound like it. Press play and judge.
Always free
No paywall, no forced top-ups, no rental counter.
What’s covered
Hear the Forbidden City for yourself
Free · No account · Audio works offline