With adjacent Tian'anmen Square, this has been Beijing's centerpiece attraction since more than 200,000 laborers built it for the third Ming Dynasty emperor Yongle in the early 1400s. 24 emperors and empresses of the Ming ans Qing (Manzu) dynasties made this their home and held court here across a span of 5 centures.
The 74-hectare (183 acre) complex is best known as the Forbidden City, denoting the fact that only the royal family, ministers and tribute-bearing ambassador were allowed inside. This ancient royal city, stuck in the heart of the modern city of Beijing like a life-sized time capsule, is nearly a half-mile wide (east to west) and more than a half-mile long (north to south). Its palaces, pavilions, and halls are divided into 9,000 rooms, and the whole complex is enclosed in thick walls over 30 feet tall and by a moat 170 feet across. Now the old world of beautiful concubines and priapic emperors, ball-breaking (and -broken) eunuchs and conspicuous wealth still hovers around the lush gardens, courtyards, pavilions and great halls of the palace.
The first of its three areas has four monumental gates and a moat spanned by five marble bridges. The magnificent Gate of Supreme Harmony, with its bronze guard-lions, leads to flagstone-paved courtyard accommodating 9,000 people on imperial ceremony occasions. The Hall of Supreme Harmony and the bronze incense burners and jade chimes for those events like beyond.
Next are the royal living quarters, whose small, intimate courtyards and palaces are now museums housing the dynastic clock, artwork, calligraphy and other collections. At the back are the ancient cypress and pine trees, and the well in which the Empress Dowager Cixi Drowned a concubine who was threatening her hold on power.
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