Why forbidden city

The last emperor, Puyi who ruled from to under the reign name Xuantong , continued to live in the palace after his abdication until he was expelled in During nearly five hundred years of imperial operation, the palace served as the residence and court of twenty-four emperors.

Mirroring this arrangement is the Inner Court, which is the northern portion of the Forbidden City. The Inner Court is not only comprised of the residences of the emperor and his consorts but also venues for religious rituals and administrative activities.

In total, the buildings of the two courts account for an area of some , square meters. These structures were designed in strict accordance to the traditional code of architectural hierarchy, which designated specific features to reflect the paramount authority and status of the emperor. The emperors' Dragon Throne Longyi is in this hall. In Qing Dynasty, it was mainly used for ceremonial purposes, such as coronations, investitures, and imperial weddings.

The second hall, behind the Hall of Supreme Harmony is the Hall of Central Harmony Zhonghedian , the resting place of the emperor before presiding over grand events held in the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Emperors would rehearse their speeches and presentations here before departing to the Temple of Heaven for the sacrifice rites. The last hall is the Hall of Preserving Harmony Baohedian , used for banquets and later for imperial examinations.

There are a couple of side gardens with interesting halls to explore. Please consult with your local guide if you want to visit them and have more time to explore the palace.

Out from the Hall of the Preserving Harmony, you will notice a huge block of marble carved with cloud and dragon designs. Go straight, and you will see another gate, called the Gate of Heavenly Purity Qianqingmen.

This is the main gateway to the inner living court. On the left side of the inner court is the Mental Cultivation Hall Yangxindian.

From the time of third Qing emperor Yongzheng, all the remaining Qing emperors, 8 in total, resided in this hall. Six Eastern Palaces and Six Western Palaces opposite each other, with the Back Three Palaces as their axis of symmetry, were the residences of the imperial concubines. Each palace has its own courtyard, main hall, and side hall. Each hall was managed by a high-ranking concubine. She lived in the main areas, while low-ranking concubines lived in the side rooms.

It was where many Qing emperors were born and raised. It was a place for the emperor's family to relax and visit. The garden offers an aesthetic change — from the crimson and gray building complex to a colorful and luxuriant atmosphere.

The Forbidden City is outstanding not only because of its magnitude, but also for its unique architectural design. Here are five key features. To represent the supreme power of the emperor, given from Heaven, and the place where he lived being the center of the world, all the important gates and halls of the Forbidden City were arranged symmetrically on the north-south central axis of old Beijing. Heaven was thought to be Polaris the North Star , the only seemingly stationary star in the northern sky, and the Forbidden City's layout points its visitors straight at "Heaven".

The Forbidden City is the largest and most complete complex of ancient wooden structures in the world. The main frames of all buildings were built with high-quality wooden beams and columns, including whole trunks of precious Phoebe zhennan wood from the jungles of southwest China.

Forbidden City carpenters used interlocking mortise and tenon joints to build its great palace buildings "harmoniously", without nails. Nails were considered violent and inharmonious.

The main colors of the Forbidden City are yellow and red. The walls, pillars, doors, and windows were mostly painted in red, which is a regarded as a symbol of good fortune, and happiness in Chinese culture.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, yellow was a symbol of supreme power and only used by the imperial family. If you climb up to the top of "Scenery Hill" in Jingshan Park and overlook the Forbidden City, you will see an expanse of yellow glazed tile roofs. There is a row of mystical animal statuettes placed along the ridge line of halls that were only for official use.

The animals, like dragons , phoenixes, and lions, have powerful meanings in Chinese culture. The number of animals is different based on the importance of the buildings. You can see 10 animals on the Hall of Supreme Harmony , the most important structure in the Forbidden City, and seven on the Palace of Earthly Tranquility , the residence of the Empress. In Chinese culture, the lion is the king of the animals, and is regarded as a symbol of power and strength.

Stone and bronze lions are popular as symbolic guardians , and can be seen beside the gates of many Forbidden City palace compounds. The lions are always in pairs, with the female lion on the left and the male on the right. The Palace Museum holds more than a million rare and valuable works of art , a sixth of the total number of cultural relics in China.

The collection includes ceramics, paintings, calligraphy, bronzes, timepieces, jade pieces, ancient books, and historical documents. The main exhibitions are:. The Forbidden City is now years old , counting from when the Forbidden City was completely constructed.

The Forbidden City used to be the residence of emperors. After the last emperor of China left the palace in , it became a museum open to the public.

Now it is the most popular tourist attraction in Beijing not counting the Great Wall. Legend has it that Emperor Yongle, who built the Forbidden City originally planned 10, rooms to be built.

But it was just the latest chapter in an unlikely tale of survival. Ancient design principles. The Forbidden City is, today, synonymous with Beijing, but its story actually begins in a city almost 1, kilometers miles to its south: Nanjing. It appeared that Nanjing would remain China's capital for as long as the Ming were in charge, and when Zhu Yuanzhang died, his grandson and chosen successor continued to rule from the city. However, one of Zhu Yuanzhang's sons, Zhu Di, who established a power base in Beijing, had other ideas.

In the summer of , after a three-year conflict between Zhu Di and the emperor, the imperial palace in Nanjing was razed by fire, apparently killing the emperor and his family. Zhu Di claimed the throne for himself, becoming known as the Yongle Emperor and establishing Beijing as the national capital. There he built an imperial palace to dwarf that of his predecessor to the south.

The Forbidden City, as it would later become known, was completed in , and required a workforce of hundreds of thousands, using materials from across the country: precious timber from Sichuan in China's far southwest; fine gold leaf from Suzhou, near Shanghai; clay bricks from Shandong to the east.

Though the marble came from a quarry only 31 miles 50 kilometers west of Beijing, some of the largest pieces were so heavy that they could only be transported during the winter, when water was poured onto the road to create an icy surface across which the stone could slide -- when pulled by a team of thousands.

Decorative elements on the roof of a building in the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City's original architects drew design principles from the second-century B. Symmetry was crucial, with a city's boundaries marked by a square wall. The text decreed that roads, starting from gates built into these walls, were to run east to west and north to south across the city. At the very center of the complex, protected by yet another wall, should sit the ruler's palace. Looking at maps of the square, walled inner-city of old Beijing, with the palace at its center, the influence of these ancient principles upon the Yongle Emperor's architects are obvious.

Even the Forbidden City's smallest design details are rich in symbolism, from its golden yellow tiles -- a color linking the emperor to the sun -- to the ceramic animals that line the corners of the palace roofs.

The dragon stands for the emperor and the power invested in him, the phoenix signifies virtue and the seahorse brings good fortune. The palace walls and supporting columns were washed with red clay from Shandong province; again, a color associated with the emperor, who wrote his edicts in red ink. Though emperors of the Qing dynasty added some new buildings and gardens, the layout of the palace has remained fundamentally the same since it was completed in Yet, as soon as construction finished, the Forbidden City was threatened by what would become a perpetual nemesis: fire.

The palace buildings, primarily made of wood, were vulnerable to lightning strikes, the open flames used for lighting and heating, and even pyrotechnic displays. To combat the risk of fire, hundreds of metal vats were placed around the palace to collect water they were heated with small fires during the winter to stop the water freezing and early lightning conductors were built onto higher roofs.

Still, there were regular fires, as well as earthquakes, over the centuries. As a result, almost all of the buildings of the Forbidden City are later reconstructions of the originals -- the Hall of Supreme Harmony, for instance, has been rebuilt seven times since its first construction.

Decades of conflict. Conflict has also posed a regular threat to the Forbidden City. In , most of the palace was destroyed at the hands of rebel leader Li Zicheng.

After the Ming dynasty fell, Li occupied the city for 42 days, until he was forced out by the Manchu forces who would establish the next ruling dynasty, the Qing.

As he left, his troops set fire to the palace compound, destroying most of its buildings. It would take decades for the Qing to finish the reconstruction work.

Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, a series of domestic uprisings and foreign conflicts also threatened the Forbidden City, as the Qing began to lose their grip on the country.

These culminated in the Boxer Rebellion of , and the most serious infringement to the sanctity of the Forbidden City in over years. The Boxers were an anti-foreign, anti-Christian sect who besieged Beijing's foreign community for 55 days that summer.

When international troops arrived to relieve the beleaguered international residents, the ruling Empress Dowager, who had supported the Boxers, fled with her court to Xi'an, more than miles to Beijing's southwest, leaving the palace empty.