What is the Forbidden City?

1. Introduction to the Forbidden City

The Forbidden City, also known as the Forbidden City, was the royal palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties. It can be called an unparalleled architectural masterpiece in the world today. Compared with the Palace of Versailles in France and the United Kingdom The Buckingham Palace in the United States, the White House in the United States, and the Kremlin in Russia are even better, and are called "the first of the five major palaces in the world."

The Forbidden City was built in 1406 AD and completed in 1420. This is the most magnificent palace complex in the world. It is 961 meters long from north to south and 753 meters wide from east to west. It has a construction area of ??155,000 square meters and contains more than 90 large and small courtyards and 980 houses. The fine wood, glazed tile roof, blue and white stone base and various magnificent paintings complement each other, fully showing the wealth and splendor of the Forbidden City.

The Meridian Gate, Donghua Gate, Xihua Gate and Shenwu Gate guard the four directions of the Forbidden City, southeast and northwest. Opposite the Shenwu Gate is a park made of earth and stone - Jingshan Park, which is full of pines and cypresses. , symbolizing everlasting greenness.

With the Qianqing Gate as the boundary, inside the Forbidden City, the architectural styles of the "outer court" and the "inner court" are completely different. The outer court, centered on the Taihe Hall, the Zhonghe Hall, and the Baohe Hall, was where the emperor held court meetings, also known as the "former dynasty"; the inner court, centered on the Qianqing Palace, Jiaotai Hall, and Kunning Palace, was where the emperor and his concubines lived. residence.

2. Forbidden City Architecture

In order to answer the question "Detailed introduction of each building in the Forbidden City", we specially found the article "Forbidden City" written by the famous architect Mr. Lin Huiyin. The article is included in the book "Common Sense of Chinese Architecture" written by Mr. Lin Huiyin (published by Tiandi Publishing House in 2019).

Lin Huiyin (1904-1955) is a famous modern Chinese poet, writer, and architect. She is known as "a talented woman of a generation." She is one of the designers of the Monument to the People's Heroes and the deepening plan for the National Emblem of the People's Republic of China. In the early 1930s, she and her husband Liang Sicheng used modern scientific methods to study ancient Chinese architecture and became a pioneer in this academic field. They later achieved great academic achievements and laid a solid scientific foundation for the study of ancient Chinese architecture. In literature, Lin Huiyin wrote many works throughout his life, including prose, poetry, novels, scripts, translations and letters.

The following content is selected from the article "Forbidden City" by Mr. Lin Huiyin, which provides a detailed and authoritative description and explanation of the architecture of the Forbidden City -

The Forbidden City in Beijing is now the capital city Palace Museum. The Forbidden City building itself is the most important historical relic in the museum. It combines physical magnificence, engineering perfection and solemn order in layout to become a group of the most outstanding and brilliant architectural monuments in the world.

The whole palace is composed of two parts: the "front dynasty" and the "inner court"; it is surrounded by a city wall, with a moat under the wall, turrets at the four corners of the city, and a door on each side: in the south is the Meridian Gate, The magnificent gate tower is called Wufeng Tower; the due north is called Shenwu Gate; the east and west gates are called Donghua Gate and Xihua Gate, and the whole group is collectively called the "Forbidden City". Looking across the river at any corner of the red walls, yellow tiles, palaces, and turrets, you will see majestic beauty and a myriad of atmospheres.

The three main halls in the center of the front dynasty are the focus of the front part of the palace. They have three floors and a majestic structure. They are masterpieces of architectural modeling. On the east side is the Wenhua Hall and on the west side is the Wuying Hall. These two groups are juxtaposed with the Taihe Gate from east to west, setting off the left and right, forming the pattern of the front of the three halls.

The inner court was the part where the feudal emperor and his family lived and worked. Because it is the so-called living place of the emperor, many strictly arranged layouts and external formal treatments are used to emphasize the "supremacy" of this single man. Therefore, the layout of the inner court still adopts a symmetrical format, and the layout symbolizes the stars in the sky and so on. For example, in the middle of the inner court, the two palaces of Qianqing and Kunning symbolize heaven and earth. The name of the palace in the middle is Jiaotai, which means "the harmony between heaven and earth". The east and west gates in front of the Qianqing Palace are named Rijing and Yuehua, symbolizing the sun and moon. The northernmost hall in the imperial garden at the back, the Qin'an Hall, also enshrines the tablet of "God Xuantian". The Palace Museum calls this part the "Middle Road". It is also the continuation of the central axis of the Qianwang Palace and a section of the central axis of the city.

There are two long east-west corridors on both sides of the "Middle Road", each with six palaces, three of which are one road, with a north-south corridor in the middle. These twelve houses symbolize the twelve stars. There are five juxtaposed courtyards on each side at the back of them, which are called the five east and west courtyards, which also symbolize the meaning of the stars. The Twelve Palaces are the residences of the "concubines" and "princes" of the inner palace, and the "Three Back Palaces" in the middle are the core of the second half of the Forbidden City. Now the museum calls the six east and west palaces "East Hall" and "West Hall", and they are open in turn on a daily basis. The West Sixth Palace was rebuilt, and an additional hall was built between Chuxiu and Yikun Palaces, forming a group. Between Changchun and Taiji, a hall was also built to form a group, and the layout changed slightly. The Yanxi Palace in the East Sixth Palace was considered to be a Western-style reconstruction of the "Crystal Palace" but failed.

The buildings outside the third road are more irregular. There are two main ones: one is the important palaces on both sides of the central axis, at the south end of the east and west roads, and in front of the Twelve Palaces. To the west is the Yangxin Hall group, which is located to the east between the "Outer Court" and the "Inner Court". It is the actual daily living place of the feudal lord. To the east of the central axis, roughly symmetrical to it, are the Zhai Palace and the Fengxian Palace. The relationship between these two groups and the Qianqing Palace is equivalent to the relationship between the Wenhua and Wuying Palaces and the Taihe Palace. The other type is the palace whose core and periphery are larger than the twelve palaces. These palaces were built for the queens of feudal lords to live in. Each group has a front hall, a back bedroom, surrounding corridors, side halls, palace gates, etc. To the west are Cining, Shoukang, Shouan and other palaces.

There is a group of Buddhist temples, Yuhua Pavilion, which is very large. It is collectively called "Outer West Road". The "Waidong Road" to the east only has one group, the Ningshou Palace, which runs directly from north to south and has a huge scope. It was originally the residence of Xuanye's (Kangxi) mother, and later Hongli (Qianlong) handed over the power to his son. When he retired and lived here, he built many elaborate and beautiful pavilions and gardens, so it was called "Qianlong Garden". It is the most special and luxurious building group outside the rear core of the Forbidden City, and it is a representative work of the increasingly cumbersome palace taste in the Qing Dynasty.

Although the rear of the Forbidden City has "thousands of households" and densely built buildings, they are still laid out in an orderly manner. In addition to the central axis, the buildings on the east and west sides are also based on several north-south axes. The streets outside the building complexes composed of each axis form a slender north-south corridor. The south ends of the main East First Street and West First Street are the "Left Inner Gate" and "Right Inner Gate" leading to the outer court. They are the main transportation lines between the inner court and the former court.

In addition to these "palaces" and "halls", there are also many service units in the Forbidden City, such as the Shang Si Yuan, the Imperial Kitchen Room, various warehouses and guard duty stations. However, the prestigious "South Study Room" and "Military Aircraft Department" where the prime ministers and ministers work, are actually just a few verandah buildings next to Qianqing Gate. The military aircraft department is worse than a row of stables in the courtyard! The feudal emperor cruelly drove the working people to build a palace for him, pampering himself and enjoying every detail, but even his military ministers were still treated like slaves. Such facts can be reflected by the architecture and layout of the Forbidden City. All the buildings in the Forbidden City are the richest historical materials.