Forbidden City

The purple forbidden city contains the imperial palaces of the ming and qing dynasties.Twenty-four emperors,14 in the ming and 10 in the qing dynasties ruled from here.the last dynasty collapsed during the 1911 Revolution,but the last emperor puyi continued to live in the inner palace until 1924,when he was thrown out of the palace by the troops of General Feng yuxiang.After that,the palace was opened to the public as the palace museum and it was no longer forbidden to the common people.Do you know why it is called the purple forbidden city?let me tell you the reason.According to a Chinese legend,the heavenly king lived in the purple palace.the ancient Chinese emperors belivevd that they were the sons of heaven and the imperial residence was the cosmic center,so it should be off-limits for the common people.Moreover,the forbidden city,living in the center of the city,represented the purple constellation,the brightest one in the culmination.Hence the name,the purple forbidden city.

The Forbidden city covers and area of 72 hectares.it is rectangular in shape,961 meters long from north ot south and 753 metress wide from east to west.How many rooms are there in the forbidden city?good question!suppose you were born in one of the rooms and you wanted to stay in a different room every night.you would be 27 years old at the end of your experience.to be exact,it is said there are 9999.5 rooms in the whole complex.Almost Beijing Tour must visit the Forbidden City during the City tour.

The large scale construction of the palace extended from 1406 to 1420.what does that mean?it means the forbidden city was built 70 years before Columbus discovered America,140 years before the birth of William Shakespeare,the great engish playwright.it involved approximately 1000,000 workers including 100,000 artisans.the timber needed for the construction was brought mostly from southwest provinces such as Sichuan,hunan and guizhou,while most of the stones were quarried from the district of fangshan-a suburpan area of Beijing.There are some interesting stories about the transportation of the stones.i will tell you more about it later during our visit.

The imperial palace is surrounded by a 10 metre high wall,and further encircled by a 52 metre wide,3800 metre long moat.on the wall are four gates,each with a tower above them,and on the four corners of the wal stand four watch towers,each with three roofs and 72 roofridges.they are masterpieces of ancient Chinese architecture.

The construction of the grand walls showed the wisdom of the ancientartisans.As you can see,the wall is not straight upward like the ones we see today,it is ladder shaped,in fact,the bottom is 2 meters wider than the top,making it stronger,and more difficult for attempts to climb over the wall.the bricks on the wall were made from special materials in Shandong province and shipped all the way north to Beijing,via the great canal,this canal lies in the eastern part of china linking Beijing and famous southern city Hangzhou.Mkade partly of hite lime and glutinous rice,the bricks were dense,strong and smooth,In addition,a mixture of glutinous rice juice and egg whites were used as glue to cement the stone sabs and the bricks together.Look at the wall,can you imagine they are nearly 600 years old?the walls are made up of 20 million bricks,each one weighs about 24KG.it was truly a difficult job to build the wall,let alone the whole complex.

The building in the forbidden city are arranged symmetrically.along the central axis are three big halls,namely the hall of supreme harmony,the hall of complete harmony and the hall of preserying harmony.they make up the main part of the front area known as the quter court where the emperors attended state affairs.Behind the three big halls lay the living quarters of the imperial family,which consist mainly of the palace of heavenly purity,the palace of earthly tranquility,the hall of union and peace,six eastern halls and six western halls.If you only have one day,and want to visit it,you can choose the Beijing Coach Tour,Beijing coach tour only one day tour to visit the whole sightseeing tour around Beijing.