For five centuries this walled palace city was the sealed centre of Chinese imperial power, where the Ming and Qing emperors received the empire’s tribute from a throne hall raised on marble terraces. Today it holds one of the largest collections of Chinese art anywhere, still arranged along the axis the Yongle Emperor laid out in the fifteenth century.
At a glance
The Forbidden City, known formally as the Palace Museum and in Chinese as Gùgōng, or ‘Former Palace’, covers 72 hectares behind a moat and 10-metre walls, making it the largest palace complex in the world. It comprises 980 buildings and, by the Palace Museum’s own 1973 survey, 8,886 rooms, a figure often inflated in popular retelling to 9,999.5. The whole complex is set precisely on Beijing’s north-south axis, running from the Yongdingmen gate in the south to the Bell Tower in the north.
Key facts
- Built: 1406–1420, under the Ming Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di, who also moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing.
- Imperial use: residence and seat of government for 24 emperors across the Ming and Qing dynasties, from 1420 to 1912.
- Hall of Supreme Harmony: the principal throne hall, 35.05 m wide, 25.48 m deep and 27.5 m high, raised on marble terraces quarried at Fangshan and moved to Beijing on winter ice roads; its interior columns are Nanmu timber floated down from Sichuan, some 2,500 km away.
- Collection: the Palace Museum holds around 1.9 million objects, including some 153,000 Chinese paintings and 340,000 pieces of imperial ceramics.
- Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO in 1987 as the Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties in Beijing.
History
Construction ran from 1406 to 1420 under the Yongle Emperor, mobilising an estimated one million workers and a hundred thousand artisans. The palace remained the Ming seat of power until 1644, when the Manchu Qing dynasty took the throne and adapted the same buildings to its own court for a further ten emperors, ending in 1912.
The last occupant, the deposed child emperor Puyi, continued to live within the palace walls after his abdication until 1924; his tutor Reginald Fleming Johnston later described this twilight period of the court in his memoir Twilight in the Forbidden City, published in 1934.
The complex opened as a public museum in 1925 and has been administered by the People’s Republic of China since 1949. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1987.
What you see
Visitors enter from the south through the Meridian Gate, the most ceremonially loaded gateway in Chinese imperial architecture: its central arch was reserved for the emperor alone, with lateral arches graded by rank down to the outermost, used by examinees and military officials. Beyond the first courtyard stands the Hall of Supreme Harmony, where the emperor received tribute and audiences and from which the Ming and Qing administered their tributary system; inside is the Dragon Throne beneath a gilded, deeply coffered ceiling and among 72 gilded columns.
The customary route runs the length of the palace’s north-south axis, from the Meridian Gate through the Gate of Supreme Harmony and the Hall of Supreme Harmony, on through the Gate of Heavenly Purity to the emperors’ residential quarters and the Imperial Garden, ending at the Gate of Divine Prowess in the north. Off this axis, side halls include a collection of some 1,200 Western mechanical clocks and watches, displayed as part of the museum’s holdings.
Practical information
- Tickets: daily numbers are capped and tickets should be booked in advance through the Palace Museum’s official channels rather than bought on arrival.
- Route: the site is walked south to north; allow a full morning or afternoon to cover the main axis and at least one side hall.
- Access: the southern entrance sits beyond Tiananmen Gate, so visitors typically approach the Forbidden City through Tiananmen Square.
Getting there
The Forbidden City lies in Dongcheng District in central Beijing, its southern entrance reached on foot through Tiananmen Gate from Tiananmen Square. It sits at 39.9163° N, 116.3972° E.
Nearby
- Tiananmen Square and Gate — immediately to the south, the ceremonial approach to the palace.
- Bell Tower — the northern end point of the same city axis that runs through the Forbidden City.
- Temple of Heaven — built by the same Yongle Emperor in 1420, part of his wider Beijing building programme.
Sources
- Palace Museum
- UNESCO
- Reginald Fleming Johnston, Twilight in the Forbidden City (1934)
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