The Forbidden City

The Forbidden City , was the residence of the imperial family during the last two Ming and Qing Dynasties. Its name comes from the fact that the entry was forbidden to any foreign to the palace and his organization like a city in "miniature". The architectural complex is impressive, but the great majority of valuables such as paintings and porcelain were taken to Taiwan by Chiang Kai-shek (Jiǎng Jieshi in Mandarin) and are displayed in the museum of Taipei (Taipei Mandarin).

The Forbidden City is located north of the city center of Beijing. The unit is headed south and a small artificial hill, the Coal Hill, was raised north of the Forbidden City to meet the demands of Chinese geomancy, the Fengshui (literally wind and water).

The Forbidden City is 960m long and 750m wide. The speakers are from 7 to 10m high and 52m wide moat are. During its occupation by the emperors of the last two dynasties for five centuries, no other building in Beijing could not exceed those of the Forbidden City. The courses are paved with nearly 12 million bricks and the Forbidden City consists of approximately 9,000 rooms.

The Forbidden City is also known as "Old Palace" (故宫Gugong) but it refers more precisely the central part of the Forbidden City without the part between the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen), and the Wǔmén .

History of the Forbidden City

This is the emperor Yongle, who decided to move the capital from Nanjing to Beijing. The construction of the Forbidden City began in 1406 and lasted fourteen years, which is very fast for a book of this size. More than 200,000 artisans participated still in construction. The materials came from all corners of the empire: the stones of the regions of Beijing, Shanghai marble, wood provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan and Shandong bricks. Construction allied modern techniques of the time while keeping the aesthetic and symbolic features of the tradition.

The Forbidden City was more or less cut off from the outside the world until 1924 when Puyi, the last emperor, was driven out.

The Forbidden City was frequently caught fire, often produced by the eunuchs and courtiers who enriched themselves through the work of reconstruction. In 1664, the Manchus reduced the palace to ashes to rebuild the palace of the new dynasty on the former with high quality materials from again for the whole empire. Most of the buildings visible today date from the eighteenth century. During the twentieth century, the Forbidden City was sacked twice. First by the Japanese army, and by the Kuomintang, which fled to Taiwan in 1949.