The Forbidden City in China
is another worldwide famous Chinese attraction,
which became even more famous after Bernardo Bertolucci’s
film The Last Emperor. The Forbidden City, called
in Chinese Zijin Cheng or Gu Gong, is located
in the centre of Beijing, China, and it is a compound
formed by 800 buildings that occupies an area
of about 720,000 square metres. This huge compound
was an imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty until
the end of the Qing Dynasty and now it hosts the
Palace Museum. The Forbidden City was declared
part of the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987
and listed as the largest collection of preserved
wooden structures in the world.
The Forbidden City, Beijing – brief history
The construction of the Forbidden City began
in 1406, under the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di. The
construction took 14 years to be completed and
it ended in 1420. In that year the emperor moved
into the Forbidden City and Beijing became the
official capital of the Ming Empire (the capital
of the 
Chinese
Empire before was Nanjing). The Forbidden City
was the residence of Ming emperors until 1644,
when the Qing Dinasty took over. Under the Qing
Dinasy, the Forbidden City kept being the centre
of power in China.
In 1912, with the abdication of Puyi (the last
emperor of China), the Forbidden City ceased to
be the political centre of China. The last emperor,
Puyi, was allowed to stay in the Forbidden City
until 1924.
During the years that followed, with the Japanese
invasion of China and then with the II World War,
the artefacts of the Forbidden City faced many
threats. However, most of the damage was done
after 1949, with the proclamation of the People’s
Republic of China and especially during the cultural
revolution. Nowadays the Forbidden City is being
restored thoroughly, in order to bring it back
to the condition it was in 1912.
The Forbidden City, Beijing – structure
The Forbidden City occupies and area of 720,000
square metres and it is surrounded by a 52 metres
wide moat and by an eight metres high wall. The
wall has a gate on each side and four beautifully
built towers, one on each corner. The main axis
of the Forbidden City is north to south and this
remains the main axis of the city of Beijing itself.
The northern axis extends towards Yongdingmen
and the southern axis towards Tiananmen Square.
The Forbidden City is divided into two parts:
the Outer or Front Court, in the southern area,
which was used for ceremonies, and the Inner Court
or Back Palace, in the northern area of the compound,
where the emperor and his family lived.
The Forbidden City, Beijing – the Palace
Museum collection
The Forbidden City hosts the Palace Museum, where
the most valuable artefacts of China are held.
These artefacts come from the imperial collections
and include item from different dynasties and
different periods of Chinese history.
The collections in the Forbidden City museum
are really impressive. They include ceramics and
porcelain, the finest of all China (about 340,000
pieces); about 50,000 paintings, including some
of the most valuable paintings in Chinese art
history; almost 10,000 pieces of bronze ware;
more than 1,000 mechanical timepieces from the
XVIII and XIX centuries and various palace artefacts.
