Forbidden City, or Forbidden Palace, located at the exact center of the ancient city of Beijing, China, was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty.

Built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000㎡ (7,800,000 sq ft), being the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. In 1987, the Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The project of Forbidden City began in 1407, during the reign of Yongle, the 3rd emperor in Ming dynasty. After 14 years of hard working, it was completed in 1420 and then the capital city of Ming dynasty moved to Beijing from Nanjing in the next year. It was said that a million workers including one hundred thousand artisans were driven into the long-term hard labor. Stone needed to built Forbidden City was quarried from Fangshan, a suburb of Beijing. It was said a well was dug every fifty meters along the road in order to pour water onto the road in winter to slide huge stones on ice into the city. Huge amounts of timber and other materials were freighted from faraway provinces.

Surrounded by grandeur city wall, the Forbidden City was composed of court in the front and emperors’ living area at the back with watching towers at four corners of the city wall. The palace complex exemplifies traditional Chinese palatial architecture and has influenced cultural and architectural developments in East Asia and elsewhere

Ancient Chinese people displayed their very considerable skills in building the Forbidden City. Take the grand red city wall for example. It has an 8.6 meters wide base reducing to 6.66 meters wide at the top. The angular shape of the wall totally frustrates attempts to climb it. The bricks were made from white lime and glutinous rice while the cement is made from glutinous rice and egg whites. These incredible materials make the wall extraordinarily strong.

Since yellow is the symbol of the royal family, it is the dominant color in the Forbidden City. Roofs are built with yellow glazed tiles; decorations in the palace are painted yellow; even the bricks on the ground are made yellow by a special process. However, there is one exception. Wenyuange, the royal library, has a black roof. The reason is that it was believed black represented water then and could extinguish fire.

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 located in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Both museums descend from the same institution, but were split after the Chinese Civil War.

Through the visit, the imperial secrecy and collection of treasures will be lifted and the dazzling world of emperors past will be brought to life.

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