heart of Beijing, the capital city of China, and is the largest ancient palace in the world.
The Forbidden City was built under orders of the powerful Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty between the years
1406 to 1420.
More than one million people worked on the construction of the expansive palace, the best materials were brought
in from all over China including specially made "golden" bricks, logs of the rare Phoebe zhennan trees, and blocks of marble, when the palace was completed, the Yongle Emperor moved the capital of the empire to Beijing city.
The Forbidden City is enormous, it covers an area of 118 acres that include 90 palaces with courtyards, 980 total
buildings, and at least 8,700 rooms. The total floor space is over 1,600,000 square feet.
The emperor had an army of servants, however, to take care of his palace and all the people that lived there.
The Forbidden City also served as a fortress to protect the Emperor and his family, it is surrounded by a 26 foot high wall and a 170 feet wide moat. Each corner of the palace has a tall guard tower were the guards used to keep
watch for enemies and assassins.
Each side of the palace has a gate with the main gate being the Meridian Gate of the south, the other gates include the Gate of Devine Might, to the north, the East Glorious Gate.
The layout of the city followed Ancient Chinese rules of design. The main buildings all were aligned in a straight line from north to south, there are two main sections to the palace: the outer court and the inner court is where
emperors conducted official ceremonies, and the Inner court was where the emperor and his family lived.
The city was designed using Ancient Chinese symbolism and philosophy, here are a few examples:
The buildings all face south which represented for holiness.
The roofs of the building in the city were made with yellow tiles. Yellow was the exclusive colour code of the emperor and symbolised his ultimate power.
The ceremonial buildings are arranged in groups of three, culturally the number 3 represented heaven.
The numbers 9 and 5 are often used because they represent the majesty of the emperor.
The traditional 5 elemental colours are used throughout the design of the palace, these include white, black,red,
yellow and green.
The roof the library was black to symbolise water in order to protect the writings from fires.
Twenty-four different Chinese emperors lived in the palace over the course of nearly 500 years.
About 100,000 artisans and craftsmen worked on the palace.
The last emperor of China, Puyi, continued to live in the Forbidden City for 12 years after he abdicated from the
throne in 1912.
Th Chinese name for the palace during ancient times was Zijin Cheng, which means 'Purple Forbidden City'.
Today it is called 'Gigong' translating 'Former Palace'.
The palace had 9,999 rooms...
Ming Dynasty
Although the primary capital of Beijing fell in 1644 to a rebellion led by Ali Zicheng(who established the Shun dynasty
soon replaced by the Manchu-led Qing dynasty), regimes loyal to the Ming throne -collectively called the Southern
Ming- survived until 1683. The Hongwu Emperor (ruled 1368-98) .
1836 by any other name.
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