The Forbidden City is a palace complex in Dongcheng District, Beijing, China, and with a total area of 720,000 square meters (180 acres), it is the largest palace in the world. However, other Chinese imperial residences far exceed it in size, namely the 6.1 square kilometer Zhongnanhai which lies just west of the Forbidden City, the 2.9 square kilometer Summer Palace in Haidian District, Beijing, and the 5.6 square kilometer Chengde Mountain Resort in Chengde, Hebei Province. It lies at the center of the Imperial City of Beijing, and the city is built around the palace complex. It is surrounded by numerous opulent imperial gardens and temples including 54-acre Zhongshan Park, the sacrificial Imperial Ancestral Temple, the 171-acre Beihai Park and the 57-acre Jingshan Park.
Today, the Forbidden City houses the Palace Museum, and was the former Chinese imperial palace and winter residence of the Emperor of China from the Ming dynasty (since the Yongle Emperor) to the end of the Qing dynasty, between 1420 and 1924. The Forbidden City served as the home of Chinese emperors and their households and was the ceremonial and political center of the Chinese government for almost 500 years.
Constructed from 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings reportedly encompassing 9,999 rooms and covering 72 hectares (over 180 acres).The palace exemplifies the opulence of the residences of the Chinese emperor and the traditional Chinese palatial architect ,and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere. The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987, and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world.
Since 1925, the Forbidden City has been under the charge of the Palace Museum, whose extensive collection of artwork and artifacts were built upon the imperial collections of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Part of the museum's former collection is now in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Both museums descend from the same institution but were split after the Chinese Civil War. Since 2012, the Forbidden City has seen an average of 14 million visitors annually, a received more than 19 million visitors in 2019.The Forbidden City's market value has been estimated at more than $70 billion, making it both the world's most valuable palace and the most valuable piece of real estate anywhere in the world.
Name
The common English name "Forbidden City" is a translation of the Chinese name Zijin Cheng The name Zijin Cheng first formally appeared in 1576. Another English name of similar origin i
"Forbidden Palace
The name "Zijin Cheng" is a name with significance on many levels. Zi, or "Purple", refers to the North Star, which in ancient China was called the Ziwei Star, and in traditional Chinese astrology was the heavenly abode of the Celestial Emperor. The surrounding celestial region, the Ziwei Enclosure was the realm of the Celestial Emperor and his family. The Forbidden City, as the residence of the terrestrial emperor, was its earthly counterpart. Jin, or "Forbidden", referred to the fact that no one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor's permission. Cheng means a city. Today, the site is most commonly known in Chinese as Gùgōng (故宫), which means the "Former Palace".[10] The museum which is based in these buildings is known as the "Palace Museu .
In Ming and Qing, the Forbidden City was also known as Da Nei .
History
When Hongwu Emperor's son Zhu Di became the
Yongle Emperor, he moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing, and construction began in 1406 on what would become the Forbidden City.
Construction lasted 14 years and required more than a million workers , Material used include whole logs of precious Phoebe zhennan wood found in the jungles of south-western China, and large blocks of marble from quarries near Beijing , The floors of major halls were paved with "golden bricks" specially baked paving bricks
from Suzhou .
From 1420 to 1644, the Forbidden City was the seat of the Ming dynasty. In April 1644, it was captured by rebel forces led by Li Zicheng, who proclaimed himself emperor of the Shun He soon fled before the combined armies of former Ming general Wu Sangui and Manchu forces, setting fire to parts of the Forbidden City in the process.
By October, the Manchus had achieved supremacy in northern China, and a ceremony was held at the Forbidden City to proclaim the young Shunzhi Emperor as ruler of all China under the Qing dynasty ,The Qing rulers changed the names on some of the principal buildings, to emphasise "Harmony" rather than "Supremacy", made the name plates bilingual and introduced Shamanist elements to the palace .
In 1860, during the Second Opium War, Anglo-French forces took control of the Forbidden City and occupied it until the end of the war , In 1900 Empress Dowager Cixi fled from the Forbidden City during the Boxer Rebellion, leaving it to be occupied by forces of the treaty powers until the following year.[20]
After being the home of 24 emperors – 14 of the Ming dynasty and 10 of the Qing dynasty – the Forbidden City ceased being the political centre of China in 1912 with the abdication of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. Under an agreement with the new Republic of China government, Puyi remained in the Inner Court, while the Outer Court was given over to public use , until he was evicted after a coup in 1924. The Palace Museum was then established in the Forbidden City in 1925, In 1933, the Japanese invasion of China forced the evacuation of the national treasures in the Forbidden City Part of the collection was returned at the end of World War II] but the other part was evacuated to Taiwan in 1948 under orders of Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang was losing the Chinese Civil War. This relatively small but high quality collection was kept in storage until 1965, when it again became public, as the core of the National Palace Museum in Taipei .
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, some damage was done to the Forbidden City as the country was swept up in revolutionary zeal, During the Cultural Revolution, however, further destruction was prevented when Premier Zhou Enlai sent an army battalion to guard the city .
The Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site in 1987 by UNESCO as the "Imperial Palace of the Ming and Qing Dynasties , due to its significant place in the development of Chinese architecture and culture. It is currently administered by the Palace Museum, which is carrying out a sixteen-year restoration project to repair and restore all buildings in the Forbidden City to their pre-1912 state.
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