The Forbidden City

After Tiananmen Square we crossed under the road and came up at the entrance to the Forbidden City. The reason it is called the Forbidden City is because no-one could enter or leave it unless they had the permission of the emperor. UNESCO lists it as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. It is a World Heritage Site. And so there are a lot of reasons to visit if you are in Beijing! Some statistics quoted from Wikipedia say the Forbidden City was built in 1406 to 1420, the complex consists of 980 surviving buildings with 8,707 bays of rooms and covers 720,000 m² (7,800,000 sq ft). It was impossible to visit all aspects of it in one afternoon. There is a lot of information in the Wikipedia entry at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_City 

 

I was struck by the fact that an ancient imperial "city" would have a picture of Chairman Mao mounted above the entrance. He actually wasn't anywhere around when it was built and didn't come along till centuries later! The Emperors would roll in their graves to think that Mao now has pride of place at the Tiananmen Gate to the Forbidden City! I suppose Mao is just there to keep an eye on happenings in Tiananmen Square. I got my camera out to get a photo with one of the guards and he quickly said "No Photo" quite emphatically - however I had already taken this one and it seemed OK at the time.

You can wander for days through the Forbidden City and I imagine you could get lost in there without too much trouble at all. However Ron and I had taken advice from our friend Lynn who had said not to follow the tour groups up the middle of the city and to branch out to one side where there were far less people and in fact quite a lot of lovely things to see. We decided to head off to the right as we entered the main part of the palaces and found ourselves going through the Galleries of Treasures. it was much quieter than the central path that went through all the palaces and it was very interesting as well - lots of museum pieces that indicated the life of the emperors and the lifestyle of the court. 

I wouldn't have missed it as it was genuinely stunning. However if you really have an interest in Chine Imperial history you will need at least three days to explore it.