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The Forbidden City

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At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the third Ming Emperor, Yung-lo created one of the most stunning architectural monuments in the world: Forbidden City. Its construction started in 1406, and was finished in 1420. It served the emperors of China from 1421 to 1911. The Forbidden City presents an unusually harmonic balance between buildings and open space within a symmetrical layout. It includes immense courtyards, terraces and stairways, and buildings decorated with golden roofs, vermilion, vivid red pigment of durable quality. It not conveys a strong image of wealth and earthly power, but also surpasses Versailles in its majesty without abandoning a sense of human scale. According to China Highlights, it is recognized as one of the …show more content…

At each corner of the Forbidden City also stands a magnificent watchtower, which was heavily guarded in the past. Around the city, there is a moat as the first line of defense. The Forbidden City covers an area of about 72 hectares with a total floor space of approximately 150,000 square meters. It contains of 90 palaces and courtyards, 980 buildings and 8,704 …show more content…

“The union of human being and the nature” is the main idea in the Book of Change. In the names of the Palace of Heavenly Purity and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, union of the heaven and the earth can be reflected. The gates were constructed based on the Chinese Eight Diagrams in hope of the harmony with the nature. Ancient people high light on the balance and harmony. As a result, all the palaces are built along the central axis symmetrically. Emperors ordered workers to build the imperial city in the heart of the capital and their residence in the center of the imperial city, so as to show their highest status. Moreover, Chinese traditional culture favors that the left side means high-ranking and the right side means low-ranking. Thus, the Altar of Earth and Harvests is on the right, while the Imperial Ancestral Temple is on the left.

Rooftop of building is also one of the tangible cultural elements. All of the buildings were roofed with yellow tiles, in order to symbolize the dignity and solemnity of the emperor. It is because only the Imperial family was permitted to wear yellow clothes or use yellow tiles. Also, more than ten types of roofs exist in it and the three halls in the outer court have three different roofs respectively. For example, single-eave hip roof, hipped-gable roof and pyramidal-hipped roof. The level of the roof

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