Landscape fragmentation is a major factor for ecological and environmental degradation, and it has serious impacts on rapidly urbanized regions. Over the last 20 years, urbanization in Beijing has substantially changed the surface landscape, and deeply influenced the landscape heterogeneity. However, much of the current research on the landscape fragmentation in Beijing City has focused primarily on simple landscape indexes, and only a few studies have investigated the complexity and dynamics of fragmentation characteristics on the temporal and spatial patterns. Therefore, the combined use of remote sensing-based technology to classify land use cover, employing the moving windows method of landscape metrics, and the spatial principal components analyses method have provided an useful comprehensive understanding of the spatial-temporal characteristics and changes in landscape fragmentation patterns. In this study, we were mainly concerned with landscape fragmentation during the rapid urbanization in Beijing City, throughout 1993, 2003 and 2013 based on RS and GIS. The LUCC results, which were obtained from Landsat TM/ETM, have been divided into two grades, including six classes in first grade and 19 classes in second grade. We have fully integrated the two grades of LUCC results to analyze landscape fragmentation, combined with the moving windows method and the spatial principal components analyses method. Additionally, we use transfer-matrix and distribution pattern maps to describe the course of urbanization in Beijing City. Based on the results of our study, we concluded that, there were many changes in landscape structure and pattern during the rapid urbanization in Beijing, and the dominant change was construction land, which increased by 47.16%. At the same time, farmland area has decreased by 21.86%. Landscape fragmentation indices also changed over time during this stage, the landscape patch number was increased from 20,986 to 24,765, the average area of landscape patches has reduced by 15.35%, landscape connectivity index (CONNECT) has decreased from 0.1316 to 0.1271, and landscape shape index (LSI) has increased from 88.426 to 98.897. This indicates that, in the process of rapid urbanization, landscape fragmentation has increased in Beijing City. The spatial distribution fragmentation pattern revealed substantial heterogeneity and complexity, which primarily has the following outcomes: a polarizing trend, in which locations show increased dissimilarity. The fragmentation index of urban center and mountainous regions has continued to decrease, but the fragmentation index of emerging urban and suburban regions has increased. The gross area of high fragmentation and low fragmentation has expanded. We find that urbanization is the main factor in the change of landscape fragmentation patterns, and the dramatically changed region lies in the urban-rural ecotone, where construction land has rapidly increased. There was hardly a directional preference in the fragmentation pattern. However, it has a distinct distance effect; the landscape fragmentation index first increases with increasing distance, and then decreases in an inverted "U" type function. Also, the landscape fragmentation showed a "layer ring structure" model for urban development in Beijing. The landscape fragmentation index reaches a maximum when the distance at range of 20 to 35 km. This study could provide both reference and guidance for land use management and ecological environment protection for rapidly developing areas. Also, the multifaceted research approach toward landscape patterns and their ecological processes must be explored.