Forbidden City

39°54′56″N 116°23′27″E

Overview of the Forbidden City

The Forbidden City or Forbidden Palace (Chinese: 紫禁城; pinyin: Zǐjìnchéng; lit. 'Purple Forbidden City'; Manchu: Dabkūri dorgi hoton, literally "Layered Inner City"), located at the exact centre of the ancient city of Beijing, China was the imperial palace during the mid-Ming and the Qing Dynasties. Known now as the Palace Museum (Chinese: 故宫博物院; pinyin: Gùgōng Bówùyùan), its extensive grounds cover 720,000 square meters, 800 buildings and more than 8,000 rooms. As such, it is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world, and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 as the "Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties". The Imperial Palace Grounds are located directly to the north of Tiananmen Square and are accessible from the square via Tiananmen Gate. It is surrounded by a large area called the Imperial City.

Although no longer occupied by royalty, the Forbidden City remains a symbol of Chinese sovereignty and the image of Tiananmen, the entrance to the Imperial City, appears on the seal of the People's Republic of China. The Palace Museum is now one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world. Recently, the site has been under much renovation which has limited visitors to the main courtyards and a few gardens.

The Palace Museum in the Forbidden City should not be confused with the National Palace Museum in Taiwan. Both museums derive from the same institution, but were split after the Chinese Civil War.

Names

The Forbidden City is known by many names. In Chinese, the site is most commonly known as Gu Gong (故宫), or the "Former Palace". (The word "Gu Gong" is also a generic name referring to all former palaces, another prominent example being the former Imperial Palaces (Mukden Palace) in Shenyang.) The museum which is located in these buildings is known as the "Palace Museum".

The name by which the site is most commonly known in English is "The Forbidden City", a translation of Zijin Cheng (紫禁城), which literally means "Purple Forbidden City".

History

The Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿) at the centre of the Forbidden City

The site where the Forbidden City stands today was part of the imperial city during the Yuan dynasty. When the Ming Dynasty succeeded it, the first Hongwu Emperor moved the capital to Nanjing and ordered that the Mongol palaces be razed in 1369. His son, Zhu Di, was created Prince of Yan with seat in Beijing. A princely palace was built on the site. In 1402, Zhu Li usurped the throne and became the Yongle Emperor. He moved the capital back to Beijing.

The construction of the Forbidden City started in 1406 and took 14 years and an estimated 200,000 men. The principal axis of the new palace sits to the east of the Yuan Dynasty palace, a design intended to place the Yuan palace in the western or "kill" position in fengshui. Soil excavated during construction of the moat was piled up to the north of the palace to create an artificial hill, the Jingshan hill.

From its 1420 completion to 1644, when a peasant revolt led by Li Zicheng invaded it, the Forbidden City served as the seat of the Ming Dynasty. The following Qing Dynasty also occupied the Forbidden City. In 1860, during the Second Anglo-Chinese Opium War, British forces managed to penetrate to the heart of the Forbidden City and occupied it until the end of the war, being the only foreign power to do so.

After being the home of 24 emperors—fourteen of the Ming Dynasty and ten of the Qing Dynasty—the Forbidden City ceased being the political center of China in 1912 with the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. He was, however, allowed and, in fact, required to live within the walls of the Forbidden City, until a coup launched by a local general in 1924. Puyi was forced out, and the Palace Museum was established in the Forbidden City. Having been the imperial palace for some five centuries, the Forbidden City houses numerous rare treasures and curiosities. These were gradually catalogued and put on public display. However, with the Japanese invasion of China, the safety of these national treasures were cast in doubt, and they were moved out of the Forbidden City. In 1947, after they had been moved from one location to another inside mainland China for many years, Chiang Kai-shek ordered many of the artifacts from the Forbidden City and the National Museum in Nanjing to be moved to Taiwan, where they formed the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This action has been extremely controversial, with some regarding it as looting while others regarding it as safekeeping, especially after the events of the Cultural Revolution on the mainland.

Layout

The imperial throne inside the Palace of Heavenly Purity (乾清宮), the place of day-to-day government and imperial audiences

Rectangular in shape, the Forbidden City is the world's largest palace complex and covers 720,000 square meters (178 acres, or 0.28 square miles). Surrounded by a six meter deep moat and a ten meter high wall are five halls, seventeen palaces, and numerous other buildings. The Forbidden Palace is reputed to have a total of 9,999.5 rooms. However, according to surveying by the Palace Museum, there are about 8,600 existing rooms. (The majority of buildings in the Forbidden City have an odd number of rooms, distributed symmetrically about an axis. However, the Imperial Library (文渊阁) had six rooms as a charm against fire, because the number six is associated with water in astrology. So that the building does not look out of place, the sixth room was built very small, hence the half-room.)

The wall has a gate on each side. At the southern end is the Meridian Gate (technically, Tiananmen Gate is not part of the Forbidden City); to the north is the Gate of Divine Might, which faces Jingshan Park. The distance between these two gates is 960 meters, while the distance between the gates in the east and west walls is 750 meters. The walls are thick and squat and were specifically designed to withstand attacks by cannons.

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 Forbidden City is divided into two parts. The Outer Court, which includes the southern and central sections, centres on three halls used for ceremonial purposes, such as coronations, investitures, and imperial weddings. The three halls include the magnificent Hall of Supreme Harmony (太和殿), itself fronted by the Gate of Supreme Harmony (太和門). Apart from ceremony, the Outer Court also houses the imperial library, archives, and lantern storage. The Inner Court includes the northern, eastern, and western parts of the Forbidden City, and centres on another three halls used for day-to-day affairs of state. The most important among these is the Palace of Heavenly Purity (乾清宫). The Inner Court is where the Emperor worked and lived with his family, eunuchs and maid-servants.

At the northern end of the Forbidden City is the imperial garden. It is home to some relatively old trees, most between 100 and 300 years of age.

Outside the main gate to the Forbidden City, the Meridian Gate faces a square where imperial corporal punishments were sometimes carried out. To the south of that square stands Tiananmen Gate. Today, Tiananmen Gate in front of the Forbidden City is decorated with a portrait of Mao Zedong in the center and two placards to the left and right. The left one reads "中华人民共和国万岁"(Chinese: 中華人民共和國萬歲; pinyin: zhōnghuá rénmín gònghéguó wànsuì; "Long Live the People's Republic of China"), while the right placard reads "世界人民大团结万岁"(Chinese: 世界人民大團結萬歲; pinyin: shìjiè rénmín dà tuánjié wànsuì; "Long live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples"). The phrasing has great symbolic meaning, as the phrase used for long live, like the palace itself, was traditionally reserved for Emperors of China, but is now available to the common people.

Inside the Forbidden City

Major buildings include:

• Meridian Gate
• Tiananmen Gate
• Gate of Supreme Harmony
• Gate of Divine Might
• Hall of Supreme Harmony
• Palace of Heavenly Purity

The Forbidden City is surrounded by royal gardens. To the west lies Zhongnanhai, the complex of buildings centred on two lakes which serves as the central headquarters for the Communist Party of China. To the north-west lies Beihai Park, which also centres on a lake and is a popular park. To the north lies Jingshan Park, also known as Jing Shan or Coal Hill, where the last Ming emperor hanged himself as the rebel army overran his palace.

The individual buildings within the Forbidden City housed many important members of the Chinese aristocracy. The famous national civil service exams were given inside one of these buildings. The royal color was yellow, and that color dominates the rooftops. On each corner of the roofs, there are small statuettes, the number of which designated the power of the person living within the building. The number 9 was reserved for the emperor. Only one building has 10 statuettes at each corner

Model displays in the United States

Forbidden Gardens, a privately-funded outdoor museum in Katy, Texas has a one to twenty scale model of the Forbidden City. Palace buildings and occupants are displayed under a 40,000 square foot (4,000 m²) pavilion. Cutaway models in a separate Architecture Room show details of palace roof and beam construction.

The museum's sponsor is a Chinese businessman whose goal is to share his country's history, but the museum may have also been sponsored by the mainland government.

Image gallery

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  The imperial palace
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  Imperial palace staircase
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  A statue of a crane in the Forbidden City
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  Rooftops of the Forbidden City
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  Tourists inside the Palace Museum
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  Architectures inside the Palace Museum
• Bedchamber guardian lions
  Bedchamber guardian lions
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  Ceiling of one of the buildings in the imperial garden
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  Nine Dragons screen
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  The emperor's throne
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  One of the many halls and palaces containing the emperor's imperial throne
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  Imperial roof decoration

The Forbidden City and popular culture

• Marco Polo a joint NBC and RAI (Italy) TV miniseries broadcast in the early 1980s, was filmed inside the Forbidden City. This was artistic license, however, since historically, the Forbidden City did not exist in the Yuan Dynasty, during the time of Marco Polo's relationship with Kublai Khan.

• The Last Emperor (1987) was the first feature film ever authorized by the government of the People's Republic of China to film in the Forbidden City.

• Giacomo Puccini's opera, Turandot, about the story of a Chinese princess, was performed inside the Forbidden City for the first time in 1998.

• The musician Yanni performed inside the Forbidden City to an audience of 120 million in 1997.

• In 2004, the French musician Jean Michel Jarre performed the first live concert in the Forbidden City, accompanied by 260 musicians as part of the "Year of France in China" festivities.

• The Forbidden City is the final destination of the two protagonists, Jules and Julie, in the cartoon series The Twins of Destiny.

• The 5th Avenue Theatre in Seattle, Washington imitates three ancient Chinese architectural achievements located in Beijing: the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and the Summer Palace. A nearly exact replica of the dome from the throne room of the Imperial palace in Bejing's Forbidden City graces the 5th Avenue Theatre’s ceiling. Authentic dragons and hoho birds scatter the walls of the theatre with an authentic Chinese quality.

Reference

• Ho and Bronson 2004. Splendors of China's Forbidden City. ISBN 1-85894-258-6.

See also

• National Palace Museum
• Chinese art

External links

• Palace Museum official site
• ForbiddenCityChina.com Over 400 high quality photographs (2005-2006); maps; guide.
• Photos Gallery
• Links
• Forbidden City Map
• Forbidden City Satellite Map 1 & 2
• Palace Museum Official Map
• World heritage virtual tour via immersive panoramas
• Forbidden City Introduction
• Forbidden City Guide
• Satellite photograph of the Forbidden City
• Panoramic map of the Forbidden city
• National Palace Museum official website (Taipei City, Taiwan)
• China Museums
• The 5th Avenue Theatre History and Photos