55.The Forbidden City
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Historical Places
The Forbidden City
Designated as a World Cultural Heritage Building, the Forbidden City is a magnificent former
imperial palace built during the Ming Dynasty. It is enormous in scale, covering an area of almost 178 acres and
including 8,700 rooms. The entire palace complex is surrounded by a high red wall, with four gates, one on each side,
with the Meridian Gate (Wu Men) forming the main entrance. On each corner of the palace compound is a stunning
watchtower decorated in eye-catching gold and red.
The Forbidden City is also known as the Palace Museum and in its halls and galleries houses over
a million national treasures and artifacts, including art, pottery and bronzes.
Dragon statue in Forbidden City.
The construction of the Forbidden City
took 14 years, from 1406 to 1420. During the Ming Dynasty
(until 1644) and Qing Dynasty (from 1644 to 1911) 24 emperors
called the Forbidden City home. Housing the imperial family,
their huge cadre of attendants, and a massive bureaucracy, the
Forbidden City was true to its name and functioned as a
self-contained community.
Barred to outsiders during the 500 years
of its use as a palace, tourists can now enter the
Forbidden City through the Wu Men Meridian Gate or the Shenwu
Men (Gate of Divine Might). The Meridian Gate is the tallest
of all the buildings in the palace and has five entrances for
people of different ranks. The central entrance was for the
Emperor alone and the Empress on her wedding day. The royal
family members used the entrance on the west and the ministers
used the eastern entrance.
The Outer Court contains three huge halls, including Taihe Dian, the Hall of Supreme Harmony. This
is the largest and most magnificent of all the halls in the palace. Also known as the Hall of the Golden Throne, it was
used for grand occasions and celebrations, and the sumptuous decor served to remind visitors of imperial power.
On the either side of the Inner Court are
the Six Western Palaces (Xiliu Gong) and the Six Eastern
Palaces (Dongliu Gong) where the Emperor’s wives and their
attendants lived. Polygamy was legal in the feudal era of China’s
history. One of the palaces, the Palace of Eternal Spring, has a
famous fresco of a scene from a novel, ‘A Dream of Red
Mansions’, popular with the Empress Cixi during the Qing
Dynasty. Wanrong, the last empress, also lived in this palace, and
there are a number of items from that era displayed.
Forbidden City - Imperial Palace.
At the southern end of the area containing the wives’ palaces is the colorful Nine Dragon Wall, made
of glazed tiles and depicting dragons at play.
The Hall for Ancestral Worship (Fengxian Dian) was originally where emperors marked their respect for
their ancestors. Now the hall houses an impressive collection of clocks and watches, made in the imperial workshops and
elsewhere. Some of the clocks and watches on display are 2000 years old and still work perfectly.
The Imperial Garden, located behind the
Hall of Earthly Tranquility, is almost 3 acres of formal,
symmetric gardens, with four lovely pavilions named after the
four seasons. In the center is Qin’an Dian, the Hall of
Imperial Peace. The paths throughout the garden are made of
vari-colored pebbles creating designs of flowers, landscapes
and images taken from famous stories.
Touring the Forbidden City is an awe-inspiring experience, impressing visitors with the palace’s
massive scale and its magnificent decoration.
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