Forbidden City

For almost five centuries the Forbidden City was the physical centre of the Chinese state. The Yongle Emperor of the Ming dynasty began it in 1406, after moving the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and the complex was ready by 1420; from then until 1912 twenty-four emperors, fourteen Ming and ten Qing, lived and ruled here. The name in Chinese, Zijincheng, joins the idea of prohibition with the colour purple, a reference to the Pole Star around which heaven was believed to turn, as the empire turned around the emperor. Ordinary people could not enter. After Puyi's abdication he was allowed to remain in the inner palaces until 1924, and the following year the complex opened as the Palace Museum.

The layout is a rectangle about 960 by 750 metres, surrounded by a moat 52 metres wide and a wall almost 8 metres high, with elaborate corner towers. Roughly 980 buildings survive, all laid out along the north-south axis that still structures central Beijing, running from Tiananmen through the palace to Jingshan Park. The southern half, the Outer Court, was the ceremonial stage: visitors enter through the Meridian Gate, cross a stream by one of five marble bridges and reach three great halls on a triple white marble terrace. The Hall of Supreme Harmony, the ceremonial centre of imperial power, is the largest surviving wooden building in China. North of it, the Inner Court held the emperor's residence, the empress's quarters and the Six Eastern and Six Western Palaces of the consorts, a warren of courtyards on a far more domestic scale. The yellow glazed tiles on almost every roof were reserved for the emperor, and the number of small guardian figures on each roof ridge ranks the building beneath it.

The Palace Museum's collection, built on the Qing imperial holdings, runs to well over a million objects, including ceramics, paintings, bronzes, jade and one of the world's great collections of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century clocks; part of the imperial collection was taken to Taiwan in 1948 and now forms the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. The complex has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

Getting there

The palace lies in the centre of Beijing, about 1.1 km from the city's central point. Beijing Capital International Airport (PEK) is 25.1 km away; Beijing Daxing International (PKX) is about 46 km. Tian'anmendong station on Line 1 of the Beijing Subway gives the most direct access. The Meridian Gate on the south side and the Gate of Divine Prowess on the north, facing Jingshan Park, are among the complex's access points.