The Forbidden City

One of the world’s most magnificent palaces, the Forbidden City’s imposing main gateway looms large over Tian’anmen Square. Forbidden to the public from its construction until after the fall of dynastic China, the splendor of imperial life is now open for the world to see. Originally built under the Ming Emperor Yongle, on the site of a Yuan dynasty palace, the Forbidden City served as the imperial seat for another 23 Ming and Qing rulers. The city’s original Chinese name, Zijin Cheng, means Purple Forbidden City, which alludes not to its color, but to the Polar Star, which was seen as the center of heaven. Now the city is officially entitled Gugong, meaning Palace Museum, which really doesn’t do justice to the wonders within.

The term city might sound like exaggeration, considering that this is a palace, but with its 800 buildings housing 9,999 rooms and great halls, and a labyrinth of courtyards, gardens and passages all contained within a complex nearly a thousand yards long and 820 yards wide, it really is a city within a city. It’s difficult to gauge the city’s size from within, but a trip to Jingshan Park will provide some sense of scale, while a Google earth search will leave you in no doubt of its magnitude. Apart from annual trips to the Temple of Heaven, the Summer Palace and the Mountain Resort at Chengde, emperors seldom left the city and its legions of concubines and eunuch servants.

Although destroyed and reconstructed several times through history, the design of the buildings remains largely the same, but to really appreciate the splendor of what the city was like under the Ming and Qing you also need to take a trip to the National Palace Museum in Taiwanese Taipei! The bulk of the treasures from the Forbidden City were smuggled out by the fleeing Chiang Kaishek in 1949 and, if you visit both, you can really put the place together. The Cultural Revolution threatened to tear apart what was left and it was only the intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai that saved the Forbidden City. These days its wonders are seen by thousands of visitors every day and at the time of writing parts of the city were being given a facelift for the 2008 Olympics.

Visiting the Forbidden City

The city is visited from south to north and there are guides (one person ¥150, four people ¥400 for a 90-minute tour) and audioguides (¥40 plus a ¥200 deposit) are available at the main entrance at the Meridian Gate. While the principal courtyards and halls on the main south-north axis hold the most impressive buildings and are all must-sees, their inhuman scale (and the crowds of tourists visiting them) can make it difficult to get a sense of what life was like here during the dynastic era; a more insightful perspective (and solitude) can be found by visiting the smaller chambers that flank the main courtyards.

Throughout the city you will notice a number of recurring features, including dragons (signs of the emperor), phoenixes (signs of the empress) and golden lions, symbolic of the natural order of things – the male has the globe at his feet, while the female tends a cub! You’ll also see images of cranes and tortoises popping up from time to time and these represent longevity and immortality. Enormous cauldrons are also dotted throughout the city and these were filled with water (which had to be heated to stop it from freezing in winter) in order to quell fires.