Forbidden City

Lying at the exact center of Beijing, the Forbidden City (pronounced Gu Gong in Chinese), used to be the former Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Now known as the Palace Museum, it is to the north of Tian'anmen Square. During the third Ming emperor Yong Le's reign, large-scale construction of the Forbidden City started in 1406. The construction took 14 years and was completed in 1420. The following year, in 1421 the capital of Ming Dynasty was moved from Nanjing to Beijing. Fourteen emperors of Ming Dynasty and ten of Qing Dynasty ruled the nation in the Forbidden City. The last dynasty fell in 1911, but Emperor Puyi still lived in the inner court. It was not until 1925 that the complex was converted into a museum. Since then the palace has been opened to the public.
 

Brief Introduction of Forbidden City
The Forbidden City covers an area of about 72 hectares(178 acres) with a total floor space of approximately 150, 000 square meters(1,614,000 square feet); and it's rectangular in shape, 960 meters long from north to south and 750 meters from east to west, with a 10-meter high city wall surrounded, and encircled by a 52-meter wide moat. There are unique and delicately structured towers on each of the four corners of the curtain wall. These afford views over both the palace and the city outside. The popular saying is that there are 9,999 rooms(*Space enclosed by four pillars was treated as one room), just one less than the Purple Palace in the heaven. However, the fact is that according to the statistics in 1973, it consists of 90 palaces and courtyards, 980 buildings and 8,704 rooms. To represent the supreme power of the emperor from the God and the place where he lived being the center of the world, all the gates, palaces and other structures of the Forbidden City were arranged on both sides of the south-north central axis.
 

Architecture Style of Forbidden City
The Forbidden City can be divided into two parts: the southern section--the Outer Court and The northern section--the Inner Palace. The Outer Court consists of  three halls--the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the Hall of Complete Harmony and the Hall of Preserving Harmony, where the emperors attended the grand ceremonies and conducted the state affairs with the annex halls on both sides. While the Inner Court is composed of the rear three main palaces--the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Palace of Union and Peace, and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility--as well as the six eastern palaces and six western palaces, where the emperors used to handle daily affairs and the the living quarters for the emperor , empress and imperial concubines to live in. Having been the imperial palace for some five centuries, it houses numerous rare treasures and curiosities.

In the 1992 Comments on Beijing attractions in World Travel Wonders, experts commented that the Forbidden City is the best-preserved imperial palace complex and the largest ancient palatial structure in the world. Listed by UNESCO as one World Cultural Heritage Site in 1987, the Forbidden City is now one of the most popular tourist attractions over the world.

Would you like to travel to this landmark of China in Beijing? Here hand-pick 2 tour routes for you:
Beijing Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace Day Tour by Bus for $30
Beijing Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven Private Day Tour from $52